
Class ^(fi( i>n 
Book Ifll-. 






PUBLISHERS' NOTE. 



In this volume are presented sixty-five of the speeches and 
addresses of Hon. "William McKinley, Governor of Ohio, late 
Kepresentative in Congress, and one of the prominent public men 
of the country. It has been compiled by Mr, Joseph P. Smith, 
Librarian of the Ohio State Library, and revised by Mr. McKinley 
himself, so far as the opportunities of a busy public life would 
admit. The selections have been made from several hundred 
speeches, delivered in all parts of the country, and indicate the 
wide range of topics on which Mr. McKinley has spoken. Espe- 
cial attention is called to the care and ability with which he 
has discussed the tariff question. All his more important tariff 
speeches are here collected in a single volume, and it is believed 
that his arguments in advocacy of the doctrine of protection will 
prove peculiarly acceptable at this time, when the matter of ad- 
hering to or abandoning our present economic policy is the prin- 
cipal question at issue between the two great political parties of 
the country. 



CONTENTS. 



PAGE 

1. The Wood Tariff Bill 1 

2. Congressional Gerrymandering 23 

3. Free and Fair Elections 33 

4. Crimes against the Ballot — Ohio Republican State Convention 

OF 1880 55 

5. The Contest against Judge Taylor 63 

6. The Tariff Commission 70 

7. The Tariff of 1883 106 

8. James A. Garfield— A Memorial Address. (With Portrait.) . . 124 

9. The Morrison Tariff Bill 131 

10. The Wallace-McKinley Contest 160 

11. Equal Suffrage 165 

12. What Protection means to Virginia ....... 181 

13. Labor Arbitration 196 

14. The Payment of Pensions 300 

'^IS. The Surplus in the Treasury 203 

16. The Dependent Pension-Bill Veto 313 

17. Our Public Schools — Address at the Dedication of a Public- 

School Building 315 

18. Prospect and Retrospect — Address to Pioneers of the Mahoning 

Valley 320 

19. The Cleveland Administration 225 

20. The American Farmer — Address before the Ohio State Grange . 242 
V 21. Free Raw Materials — Address before the Home Market Club of 

Boston 250 

32. The Purchase of Government Bonds . . . . . . . 263 

23. John A. Logan — A Memorial Address. (With Portrait.) . . . 271 

24. Views of the Minority — From the Minority Report on the Mills 

Tariff Bill 277 

25. The Mills Tariff Bill 390 

36. Not a Candidate — Remarks at the Republican National Conven- 

-^ TioN OF 1888 336 

27. Protection and the South — Address at Atlanta, Georgia, before 

the Piedmont Chautauqua Association 337 

28. The Senate Tariff Bill 355 

29. The American Volunteer Soldier — Memorial Day Address in New 

York City 358 



vi CONTENTS. 

PAGE 

30. Protection and Revenue 368 

31. The Question op a Quorum 381 

32. Civil-Service Heform . 395 

33. The Tariff of 1890 397 

34. Ulysses S. Grant — A Memorial Address. (With Portrait.) , . 431 

35. Committee Meetings — People Heard by tee Ways and Means 

Committee 445 

36. William D. Kelley — A Memorial Address 447 

37. Free Materials for the Foreign Trade 45O 

38. The Duty on Sugar 452 

39. The Silver Bill 454 

40. The Federal Election Bill 456 

41. The Fifty-first Congress 459 

42. The Eight-Hour Law 469 

43. The Conference Committee's Report 47I 

44. New England and the Future — Address before the Pennsylvania 

New England Society 482 

45. A Reply to Mr. Cleveland— Address before the Ohio Repub- 

lican State League 487 

46. The Direct-Tax Refunding Bill 498 

47. The Hawaiian Treaty 502 

48. The Tribune's Jubilee— Address at the Fiftieth Anniversary of 

the Founding of the New York Tribune 507 

49. Pensions and the Public Debt— Memorial Day Address at Can- 

ton, Ohio 5^5 

50. No Compromise with the Demagogue— Ohio Republican State Con- 

vention OF 1891 523 

51. July Fourth at Woodstock 533 

52. The Ohio Campaign of 1891— The Opening Speech at Niles . . 539 

53. The American Workingman— Labor Day Address at Cincinnati . 558 

54. The Ohio Victory of 1891 562 

55. The State of Ohio — Address before the Ohio Republican State 

League 564 

56. Oberlin College — Address before the Cleveland Alumni . . 571 

57. Issues make Parties — Address to the Republican College Clubs 

AT Ann Arbor, IMichigan 574 

58. Notification Address to Mr. Harrison 581 

59. July Fourth at Lakeside 583 

60. The Triumph of Protection — Address before the Nebraska Chau- 

tauqua Association at Beatrice 589 

61. An Auxiliary to Religion — Address at the Dedication of the 

Y. M. ('. A. Building in Youngstown, Ohio 606 

62. The Issues of 1892 609 

63. Dedication of the Ohio Building 630 

64. The Defeat of 1892 — Address before the Ohio Republican State 

League .683 

65. Rutherford B. Hayes— A Memorial Address. (With Portrait.) . 640 



SPEECHES A^D ADDEESSES OF 

WILLIAM McKINLEY. 



THE WOOD TAEIFF BILL. 

Speech in the House of Representatives, Forty-fifth 

Congress, April 15, 1878. 

[From the Congressional Eecord.] 

The House being in Committee of the Whole for the consideration of the bill 
(H. R. 4.106) to impose duties upon foreign imports, to promote trade and com- 
merce, to reduce taxation, and for other purposes, Mr. McKinley said— 

Mr. Chairman : It is a matter of regret that the distinguished 
gentleman from New York [Mr. Wood], who presented this tariff bill 
to the House on Tuesday last, should have failed in his opening speech 
to give any explanation of the details of the bill. Indeed, at the very 
outset of his remarks he disavowed all intention of giving to the 
House any explanation or analysis of the provisions of the bill upon 
which the House will be expected to take action at no distant day. 

Following his example, I shall content myself, for the present at 
least, with a discussion of some of the general features of the bill, and 
their effect upon the business of the country. I am opposed to the 
pending bill from a high sense of duty — a duty imposed upon me by 
the very strong convictions which I entertain, after an examination 
of its several features, and from the conviction that should the pro- 
posed measure become a law, it will be nothing short of a public 
calamity. It scales down the much needed revenues of the Govern- 
ment. Although this proposition was denied by the distinguished 
gentleman who opened this debate [Mr. Wood], I desire in this con- 
nection to call attention to a carefully prepared statement by Mr. 
Young, Superintendent of the Bureau of Statistics, in which it is 
shown that the revenues to be derived under this bill, if it shall be- 
come a law, estimated upon the basis of the importations of 1877, 
will fall short of the revenues of that year something more than 
$9,000,000. 



2 SPEECHES AND ADDRESSES OP WILLIAM McKINLEY. 

This bill not only impairs the revenues of the Government, but 
it is a blow well directed at the mining, the manufacturing, and the 
industrial classes of this country. It will not be denied that any ma- 
terial readjustment of the tariff system at this time is a delicate and 
hazardous undertaking, and should be approached, if at all, with great 
care and circumspection, with a thorough knowledge of the busi- 
ness and commerce of the country, their needs and relations, which 
it proposes to affect. Its consideration should be unincumbered by~^ 
individual or sectional interests, and should be free from any at- ' 
tempt or desire to promote the interests of one class at the expense 
of the many. The higliest good to the greatest number should guide"^ \ 
any legislation which may be had. I believe if this rule should be 
adopted the proposed measure would find little favor in this House. 

I do not doubt that free trade, or its " next of kin," tariff reform, 
might be of temporary advantage to a very limited class of our popu- 
lation, and would be hailed with delight by the home importer and 
foreign manufacturer ; but no one, I predict, who has thoughtfully 
considered the subject and its effects upon our present state and con- 
dition can fail to discern that free trade or tariff reform, introduced 
into this country now, would produce still further business depression 
and increased commercial paralyzation. 

Our once prosperous manufactories are barely able now, with the 
present duties upon imports, to keep their wheels in motion ; and 
what, I ask, must become of them if the foreign-manufactured prod- 
uct which competes with the manufactured product of the United 
States shall be suffered to come into this country free of duty or at re- 
duced rates of duty ? Mr. Chairman, there can be but one result, 
which I shall endeavor to present later in the course of my remarks. 

If a change is necessary in the present tariff system, or in some 
cases a reduction is demanded for the general good, then I answer 
that such reduction or change should be the work of time, and not 
hastily or inconsiderately made. Any change, however seemingly 
trifling, will seriously operate upon the business interests of this coun- 
try, will unsettle trade and disturb values. Even a discussion of the 
question is a terror to the commercial classes ; and we have discov- 
ered since the report of the subcommittee of the Committee of Ways 
and Means was given to the House, and to the country, a marked 
disturbance in every avenue of trade and labor. 

There can be no justification for an immediate change of the pres- 
ent system. If a new policy is to be inaugurated or departures are to 
be made from the old, then they should have reference to a period of 



THE WOOD TARIFF BILL. 3 

time in the future sufficiently remote from the present to enable busi- 
ness men and tradespeople to prepare for the new order of things 
and adjust their trade conformably to it. We want in this country 
no sudden shock to further paralyze business. A law passed now, to 
go into effect at once, as proposed by this bill, or in the near future, 
would be without justification on the part of this House, and, I may 
almost say, would be an act of criminality. 

The business interests of this country can stand no additional 
burdens; they ought not to be subjected to them; and the party 
which is responsible for them will be held to fullest accountability. 

There is no National demand, I assert, for the passage of this bill ; 
no popular appeal is pressing for its enactment ; no public necessity 
requires such legislation ; no interest is suffering for want of it. 
There is no plethora in the revenues, or overflow of the Treasury, 
justifying it. Neither the producer nor the consumer wants it ; but 
the almost universal sentiment of the country is for the defeat of this 
bill, here and now, without concession, compromise, or amendment. 

There can be no mistake, Mr. Chairman, as to the popular judg- 
ment upon this measure. Scarcely an interest in the whole country 
but has petitioned this body, commencing at its extra session in Octo- 
ber and continuing down to the present moment, remonstrating 
against the proposed legislation. These petitions come not, as in 
former years, from the manufacturer and the producer alone, but the 
farmer, the mechanic, the laboring man, and the miner, all unite in 
protesting against this legislation, declaring it injurious to them as a 
whole and as a class. 

I am reminded, in this connection, of a single petition, signed by 
over one hundred thousand laboring men of this country— coming 
from seventeen States of the Union, brought here by three of their 
own number, demanding an increase of at least ten per cent upon the 
present rates of duty. 

Mr. Chairman, I doubt if any of the gentlemen of this House have 
read the memorial of these laboring men, for by a single objection it 
was excluded from the pages of the Record, and I propose at this time 
to read it : 

To the Senate and House of Representatives of the United States of America in 

Congress assembled : 

We, citizens of the United States, believing that the permanent prosperity of 
the people of the United States can he secured only by complete protection against 
foreign competition of all domestic industry, do respectfully petition for a revision 
of existing tarifE laws by an increase of at least ten per cent of the present rates, 




4 SPEECHES AND ADDRESSES OF WILLIAM McKINLEY. 

and especially that, to prevent frauds, the same imposts be levied upon old as 
upon new railroad iron ; and that all imported iron shall be subject to a protect- 
ive duty. 

We do further petition that in such revision the rates upon all imports be 
adjusted to accomplish, as nearly as possible, these results : First, absolute pro- 
tection of all domestic products in the domestic market ; second, the largest rev- 
enue upon all imported luxuries not produced in this country ; and, third, to per- 
mit all uncompeting articles of necessity, or of general use, as tea and coffee, to go 
to the people untaxed. 

This, I say, was signed by over one hundred thousand laboring 
men of the country. And you will observe that it does not demand 
a reduction of the duties upon imports, but it demands an increase, 
and in case of a revision of the tariff it announces the true principles 
on which such revision should be made ; and these principles have 
been wholly ignored by the Committee which prepared this bill, as I 
shall show hereafter. 

Now, I ask if these appeals are to go unheeded. I want to know 
if any respect is to be paid to the popular judgment on this subject. 
And I speak to the gentlemen on the other side of the House, who in 
season and out of season upon this floor have declared their affection 
for the poor laboring men, and during the first three months of this 
session of Congress have filled the Record daily with jirofessions of 
love for them. I ask you now if your service in their cause is to 
be mere "lip service," or will you unite with the majority of this 
side of the House in defeating a measure so much in opposition to 
the development of the material industries of the country and so 
obnoxious to the people at large? 

I trust you will, and it will be no longer said of you that " you 
keep the word of promise to the ear and break it to the hope." 

But, Mr. Chairman, the defeat of this measure is not only de- 
manded by the popular judgment of all classes, but it is alike the 
dictate of every just principle of morals and of fair dealing. The 
present tariff has existed almost without alteration for the past six- 
teen years, and every effort in the direction of a substantial change 
within that time has been met by defeat. Men have embarked in 
business under the existing law regulating the tariff; great enter- 
prises have been projected ; vast amounts of capital are invested all 
over the country upon the faith of the existing law and relying 
upon its permanence, and to-day millions of dollars are invested in 
buildings, machine shops, and factories all over this land, built up 
under the fostering care of protection. It is proposed by this bill, 
without any note of preparation to the manufacturing classes, with- 



THE WOOD TARIFF BILL. 5 

out any word of warning, without any service being made upon them, 
by a swift and certain blow, to destroy these vast investments of 
capital and labor. 

In my own district, with its wealth of mineral resources, with its" 
factories, machine shops, mills, and furnaces, the disaster which must 
result from the passage of the pending bill can not be estimated. The 
rich mines of coal abounding in the counties of Stark, Mahoning, 
and Columbiana, which even now are unable to furnish full time and 
fair employment to the operatives, will be forced to diminish their 
productions and the miners will be driven into other avenues of labor, 
already overcrowded. The mills and furnaces, factories and machine 
shops situated in these counties, accessible to rich mines of coal and 
ore, are famous for their iron and steel and agricultural implements. 
They have struggled with unyielding courage through the panic of 
1873 and the distressing years that have followed, and even at the 
meager wages now paid are keeping thousands of families from actual 
want. All these must, I am assured, if the present bill becomes a 
law, put out their fires, while the potteries of East Liverpool, which 
are employing a thousand men, after a bitter struggle with foreign 
capital and the established trade of European manufacturers, must 
also surrender. So with the steel interest, the wool and woolen in- 
terest, the flax interest, and the bagging interest ; and what is true of 
these special interests, in the localities I have named, is true of many 
industries the country over. 

These industries, as I have already said, were commenced and have 
grown and developed under the wise and fostering protection thrown 
around them by the legislation of this country. Capital has been put 
into manufacturing everywhere, relying upon this law. Contracts 
have been made upon the faith of it, and I say that it has ripened 
into a vested right, if not a legal vested right, the highest equitable 
and moral right, as to existing interests at least. 

I was glad to observe the other day in the speech of the gentleman 
from New York [Mr. Wood] that he was forced to admit a moral right 
existing in the manufactures of this country for the continuance of 
this same protection, and I call your attention to a brief extract which 
I have taken from his speech upon this subject : 

I recognize [says the gentleman from New York] in consequence of the pres- 
ent tariff a moral right in the interest aifected for a little longer enjoyment of 
the assistance so liberally dispensed to them. 

Even he admits that there is a high moral right resting upon the 
Congress of this country to continue still further the protection which 



Q SPEECHES AND ADDRESSES OP WILLIAM McKINLEY. 

in the past has been given to the industries of the country. I can 
assure the gentleman that his bill does not recognize this right, but 
as to many industries wholly ignores it. 

Free trade and tariff reform are captivating phrases, and to one 
unacquainted with their true meaning and import are deceptive, while 
the arguments urged in their behalf are alike deceptive and delusive. 
The chief consideration that is urged by the advocates of free trade 
or tariff reform, so called, is that the duties fall upon the consumer ; 
in a word, that the great mass of consumers in this country will get 
their products, their goods, their merchandise at a very much less 
price than they now do if free trade or tariff reform prevailed instead 
of the present policy. 

Mr. Chairman, history and experience both teach us that the agri- 
cultural products of this country have in the main increased in price 
since the tariff of 1824, but that substantially all manufactured arti- 
cles, articles that have been protected by that or successive tariffs, 
have been secured to the great body of the consumers at a very much 
less cost than they formerly were. And, Mr. Chairman, the price of 
articles has not only been diminished and the consumer benefited by 
the reduced price, but the quality of the article has in every instance 
-i—heen improved. 

! Home competition will always bring prices to a fair and reason- 
, able level, and prevent extortion and robbery. Success, or even ap- 
parent success, in any business or enterprise will incite others to 
engage in like enterprises ; and then follows healthful strife, the 
life of business, which inevitably results in cheapening the article 
produced. 

I assure you, Mr. Chairman, that the European product costs the 
American consumer very much less than it otherwise would but for 
the existence of domestic rivalry. Kemove American competition 
from foreign manufacture and importation, and the price of every 
article bought which is manufactured abroad will increase, and we 
will be forced to pay whatever grasping avarice may dictate. Our 
principal business will be to send abroad to enrich the coffers of for- 
eign nations with what money remains in this country. Be assured 
if the tariff is disturbed as proposed, very much of American compe- 
tition will be destroyed. 

These familiar propositions are aptly illustrated by the testimony 
and experience of foreign manufacturers, from which for a very little 
time I propose now to quote. I only use the testimony which I get 
from one branch of manufacture ; but the testimony in this case. 



THE WOOD TARIFF BILL. 7 

and conclusions to be drawn from it, I venture to assert, is true of 
all the other industries which come in competition with American 
industries. 

The old Staffordshire granite white ware, so universally used in 
this country for a great many years, has almost disappeared from the 
American market, and is rajjidly giving place to our own manufac- 
tured article in this branch of industry. The condition of the Ameri- 
can market, the fact that the European trade was losing its hold upon 
this country, led in 1877 to an arbitration between the owners of the 
potteries at Staffordshire in England and their operatives, touching a 
proposed reduction of ten per cent in the wages of labor to enable 
them to compete with the American manufactured ware. The arbi- 
tration was held at Hanley, England, before J. C. Davies,.Esq., of 
London, umpire. I read you the testimony of Mr. Shaw, an English 
manufacturer, largely engaged in making this ware at Staffordshire. 
He says : 

He found from time to time, first one article and then another was being 
manufactured in America at a less rate than here. The boast of America was no 
empty boast, that in ten years, at the rate they were going on, they would super- 
sede the use of British crockery in the United States. 

This is the testimony of an English manufacturer, and must be 
very gratifying to the American manufacturer and to Americans gen- 
erally. 

In ten years, at the rate they are going, they will supersede the use of British 
crockery in this country. 

Do you object to this, my free-trade advocate ? And would you 
check " the rate," by unfriendly legislation, which in time will place 
Americans upon a footing so firm and in a position so encourag- 
ing? If this be your purpose you have only to pass the pending 
measure. 

Again, as to the quality of American ware. Mr. Shaw produces 
before the umpire samples of white granite ware of American manu- 
facture, and testifies that they are sold at fully ten per cent less than 
English goods ; he was convinced that Americans had superior mate- 
rials to those the British hud in the Staffordshire potteries or they 
could not produce the articles they did ; they had every material neces- 
sary ; the difficulty as to strength and soundness was already removed, 
and he saw no reason why, in a short time, they would not overcome 
each and every difficulty. 

And I am justified in assuring this House, if Congress will but let 




8 SPEECHES AND ADDRESSES OF WILLIAM McKINLEY. 

our American jiotters alone, they will overcome each and every diffi- 
culty which exists now, or hereafter may come in their way. 

Mr. Ellsmore, another English manufacturer, testified that he was 
engaged in the American trade, had been to the United States and 
had had opportunities of seeing the quality of their goods ; his im- 
pression was that the goods Americans were making were superior to 
British ; he was himself exclusively in the American trade, and had 
had the greatest difficulty in retaining his trade there ; at one time 
he was unable to supply as much as was demanded, but circumstances 
had changed, the demand had been nearly equal to the capabilities of 
supply by him. 

The " circumstances " referred to by the witness, it is scarcely 
necessary I should tell you, have been produced by our manufac- 
turers, under the judicious protection now afforded ; and if you want 
to alter these circumstances and restore Mr. Ellsmore to his former 
position, when with all his capacity he is not able to supply the 
American demand, you have only to alter existing law as proposed by 
a majority of the Committee of Ways and Means. 

Mr. Shaw is recalled, and resumes his testimony as follows : 

When in America he had taken the trouble to go through the leading manu- 
factories, and his impression as to their prospects of successfully competing with 
this country [Europe] was that unless we can produce at a very much loss cost 
than at the present time, and the tariff is reduced, the trade of this district is 
limited to a brief time. But if, with the tariff at forty per cent (and that is the 
existing tariff), we can here produce goods at as cheap a rate as they can, we will 
be able to keep the growth and increase in the States in check, and thus preserve 
the amount of trade that must otherwise go from our potteries. 

The tariff must be reduced in the interest of the foreign potteries 
or their trade will be greatly impaired, and to gratify them, to pro- 
mote this industry in Europe, to build up theirs at the expense of 
ours, is the purpose and effect of the proposed bill. This would be 
unwise, un-American, and unpatriotic. 

Mr. Shaw closes his testimony with a significant question which 
he propounds to the umpire : 

Is it your opinion that if Americans had enjoyed and benefited by a system 
of free trade, as we have in this country for the past twenty years, that they 
would have been in a better position than we are at the present time? 

The umpire answers, " I do not see how I can apply it, although 
it is a very important question." The question is a strange and con- 
tradictory one, for after Mr. Shaw has been complaining of the dis- 
tressed condition of their business under free trade and the encour- 



THE WOOD TARIFF BILL, 9 

aging prospects of ours under a tariff policy, he gravely inquires, " If 
the United States had enjoyed a system of free trade as we have, 
would they have been in any better condition than we are to-day?" 

Certainly not, Mr. Chairman ; but, acting the part of wisdom, the 
Congress of the United States has up to this time persistently refused 
to impose upon this people a policy which, upon Mr. Shaw's own tes- 
timony, has depressed and almost disorganized the pottery trade in 
Europe. 

But I am anticipating. Mr. Edwin Powell, an English manufac- 
turer and a party to the arbitration, makes the following truthful and 
forcible reply : 

My opinion is, that if there had been no protective tariff, America would not 
have been in the same position to-day. 

This is the whole story, and completely substantiates the doc- 
trine of the protective system. This opinion is well worthy the care- 
ful consideration of the American statesman. It confirms all that 
has ever been claimed for the protective system. Our proud position 
to-day is due in great part — indeed for the most part — to the wise 
protection and fostering care thrown around American manufactures 
and labor and enterprise by the early statesmen of this country, and 
continued down to the present time. No other policy would ever 
have given us the advanced stage in manufactures that we enjoy to- 
day. 

It will be seen from the testimony to which I have called your 
attention (and there is more of the same kind which I might present 
from this arbitration, for it is all printed and given to the public) 
that the policy of the manufacturers of Europe is to keep "the 
growth and the increase in the United States in check " ; and it can 
be done, say they in their testimony, in one way only, and that is by 
a reduction of the tariff. The American Congress is to-day engaged 
in that, to the European trade, commendable work ; and for what 
purpose ? To keep the growth of manufactures in the United States 
in check and increase the board of trade returns in Europe. If we 
did not know better, Mr. Chairman, we would be justified in believ- 
ing that we were in the British House of Commons, legislating for 
British subjects, rather than charged with the high and sacred duty 
of making laws for the citizens of the United States, to protect them 
in their labor, their industries, and their investments. 

Another significant fact is made apparent from the testimony to 
which I have called your attention, that since our American potteries 



10 SPEECHES AND ADDRESSES OF WILLIAM McKINLEY. 

have been established and have got some hold upon the trade of this 
country, granite ware has decreased in price from thirty to thirty-five 
per cent. Another fact which comes out in the testimony is that we 
pay to the workmen in this country in the same line of industry at 
least fifty per cent more than the English manufacturers pay to their 
workmen. While upon this subject it is proper I should say that, al-- 
though the proposed bill upon its face reduces the duty only five per 
cent upon common white granite ware, the old duty being forty and 
the proposed duty being thirty-five, and upon first examination would 
seem not to seriously operate upon this industry, yet upon a more 
careful examination it is found to be sufficient to very seriously crip- 
ple if not wholly destroy it in the United States. 

I want to call your attention to the difference between the two 
rates of duty, the forty per cent under the present rate and the thirty- 
five per cent as proposed by this bill ; and I give you the average net 
price per package of this class of goods imported into this country, 
estimating two average assortments of best goods and one of second. 
The average net price is £6 6s. Under existing law what would be 
the duty ? I give you the figures below : 

UNDER PRESENT LAW. 

£ S. d. 

Net cost of goods 6 6 

Add package 16 

Inland freight and charges 10 

7 12 
Add two and a half per cent customs 3 9 

Total value of goods 7 15 9 

Duty forty per cent 3 2 4 

UNDER PROPOSED LAW. 

Net cost of goods 6 6 

Add five per cent 6 4 

6 12 4 
Duty thirty-five per cent 2 12 11 

"Which is an absolute reduction of over fifteen per cent. And yet 
they tell us that they have only reduced the duty five per cent upon 
this class of goods. 

The very meager profits now enjoyed by this trade and the great 
expenses to which they are still subjected by way of experiments and 
otherwise are enough, I am assured by the leading manufacturers of 
the country, to endanger this growing industry in the United States ; 



THE WOOD TARIFF BILL. IX 

and operators and operatives have united in a protest against this 
measure. 

But this is not all. In the line of decorated wares they will be 
even more seriously affected than in the branch to which I have just 
called your attention. This is almost new in the pottery art in 
America, and may truly be said to be in its infancy. The proposed 
duty is forty-five per cent, and the present duty is fifty per cent, and 
although the reduction is the same as on the former class of goods it 
will more seriously affect this special interest, because the latter has 
not reached that degree of perfection which the former has attained. 

This class of ware is exciting great interest among potters, and the 
United States trade is commanding special consideration, as will be 
seen by an article which I have clipped from the Pottery and Glass 
Trades Eeview of January, 1878, an English publication : 

During the past month good shipments have been made for America, and 
orders from that country are now coming in very freely. . . . There seems to be a 
growing taste for more artistic pottery than they have formerly had, and no doubt 
if our own manufacturers only lay themselves open to meet this demand they may 
yet show a considerable increase in the board of trade returns. 

In the same publication I find a significant fact for the encourage- 
ment of the English manufacturer: that the duty on this class of 
goods is to be reduced by Mr. Wood's tariff bill. 

Now the question which the American Congress is required to set- 
tle is, Shall we concede to the demands of the British manufacturers 
and producers, to the injury of our own, or will we continue to throw 
a reasonable protection around our own industries, and thus develop 
the material interests of the country ? I have given you the testi- 
mony of the English manufacturer ; let me now present the state- 
ment of our own. I quote from the report of the United States Pot- 
tery Association for January, 1877 : 

The trade of the United States is of more value to England, France, and Ger- 
many than all the rest of the world combined. 

Under our present tariff (though not in proportion to the difference of the 
labor values of the rival countries, Europe and America) they can not crush us, 
as they are striving hard to do. In fact they are fast losing their hold upon the 
market of the United States, just in proportion to the increased home production. 
It is evident, however, that they do not propose to lose this market without an 
effort commensurate with the object to be attained. 

They do not disguise the fact that they are prepared, with sufficient money, 
to buy up newspapers and fill the country, when the proper time arrives, from 
Maine to California, with free-trade lecturers and pamphlets. But we have faith 
in the sound common sense of the people of this country. We do not believe 



12 SPEECHES AND ADDRESSES OF WILLIAM McKINLEY. 



that they are going to be deceived by the catch word, " free trade," and to their 
own detriment alter their tariff to suit the foreigner, thus sending their money 
abroad to buy that which they will have to pay double price for the moment 
home competition is taken off. 

We feel safe in making the prediction that, if our tariff remains as it is, long 
before the expiration of fifteen years the people of this country will buy both 
china ware and earthenware, plain and decorated, at less than half the price they 
paid for it previous to the present tariff— say from 1855 to 1860 ; and, further, 
that the development of an art industry will spring out of it, rivaling the most 
coveted and noted productions of Europe and Asia. 

But it is said, Mr. Chairman, that our present system is an ob- 
struction to foreign trade, while the fact stands out before us, bidding 
us read, that our foreign trade has uniformly increased under the 
tariff policy, and always when the tariff policy has been withdrawn 
our foreign trade has invariably diminished. 

"Why, sir, we are increasing in our foreign trade to-day, with all 
the disadvantages we now experience and all the distresses that have 
swept over this country for the past five years. To-day our imports 
and exports are increasing, and in support of this I quote from the 
late report of the Secretary of the Treasury, issued April 1, 1878 : 



Imports and Expokts. 


1877. 


1878. 


Imports (twelve months, ending February 28th) 

Exports (twelve months, ending February 28th) 


$420,199,831 
603,631,538 


$475,638,634 
637,757,892 



I also invite your attention to the following extract and table, 
which I take from Mr. Bigelow's excellent work upon the tariff policy : 

The foreign trade of Russia and of the United States increased during the 
past ten years, under the policy of protection, in a greater ratio than that of 
Great Britain under the policy of free trade ; and, also, in a greater ratio than 
that of France, which the English claim as a free-trade ally. 

The following comparative table shows the percentage of increase (in round 
numbers) in the imports and the exports of merchandise of each of the countries 
just mentioned during the ten years ending 1875 : the mean amount of trade in 
1866 and 1867 and the mean amount of trade in 1874 and 1875 being taken as the 
basis of computation : 



Countries compared. 


Increase in 
imports. 


Increase in 
exports. 


Russia 


Per cent. 

104 

33 

30 

13 


Per cent. 

81 


United States 


72 


Great Britain 


25 


France .' 


16 







THE WOOD TARIFF BILL. 23 

Those who are accustomed, so inconsiderately and flippantly, to denounce our 
tariff as prohibitory and destructive of commerce, would do well to ponder these 
facts, 

Mr. Chairman, a wise tariff protects American industries and man- 
ufacturers, while it does not destroy foreign competition. Prohibi- 
tion is no part of the American system. It builds no wall about 
commerce and trade, shutting out the great world from us ; it does 
not exclude foreign importation; it prevents monopolies from ab- 
sorbing the wealth of the Nation, while it encourages growth and 
enterprise among our own people. It opens our mines ; it erects our 
machine shops, our furnaces, and factories ; it enlarges our cities and 
builds up villages. 

It adds to the material wealth of the Nation. It enhances the 
value of real estate. More than that, it gives to the farmer a ready 
market for the products of his farm. It brings a market almost 
to his very door. It imparts value to many articles which he raises 
which otherwise would be of little or no value; articles which it 
would not pay to ship to a distant market have ready sale at home. 
It does more than this : it furnishes employment to the laborer and 
subsistence to the poor, and all the while is adding to the Nation's 
wealth. 

General Jackson sounded the alarm of the present proposition in 
the bold words which he addressed in a letter to Dr. Coleman, of 
Virginia. He said : 

In short, sir, we have been too long subject to the policy of British merchants. 
It is time we became a little more Americanized, and instead of feeding the pau- 
pers and laborers of Europe, fed our own, or else in a short time by continuing 
our present policy we shall be paupers ourselves. It is therefore my opinion that 
a careful tariff is much wanted to pay our National debt and afford us the means 
of that defense within ourselves on which the safety and liberty of our country 
depend ; and last, though not least, give a proper distribution to our labor, which 
must prove beneficial to the happiness, independence, and wealth of the com- 
munity. 

Mr. Chairman, if in that early day a careful tariff was needed 
with which to pay the National debt, how much more pressing is that 
necessity to-day, with over two thousand millions of debt hanging 
over the United States? And if a careful tariff was needed then 
for the proper distribution of the labor of the country and to prevent 
pauperism, how much more overshadowing is that necessity now with 
thousands of men out of employment and tramping the land search- 
ing for work ! 



14 SPEECHES AND ADDRESSES OP WILLIAM McKINLEY. 

And, Mr. Chairman, Henry Clay was no less emphatic. In the 
United States Senate, February 12, 1832, he delivered a speech from 
which I now read : 

The fall of the protective policy, sir, would be productive of consequences 
calamitous indeed. When I look to the variety of the interests involved, to the 
number of individuals interested, the amount of capital invested, the value of 
buildings erected, and the whole arrangement of the business for the prosecution 
of the various branches of the manufacturing arts which have sprung up under 
the fostering care of this Government, I can not contemplate any evil equal to the 
sudden overthrow of all these interests. History can produce no parallel to the 
extent of the mischief which would be produced by such a disaster. The repeal of 
the edict of Nantes itself was nothing in comparison with it. That condemned to 
exile and brought to ruin a great number of persons. The most respectable por- 
tion of the population of France was condemned to exile and ruin by that meas- 
ure. But in my opinion, sir, the sudden repeal of the tariff policy would bring 
ruin and destruction on the whole people of this country. There is no evil, in my 
opinion, equal to the consequences which would result from such a catastrophe. 

Mr. Chairman, if contemplating in that early day the variety of 
interests involved, the number of individuals interested, the amount 
of capital invested, the value of buildings erected, the whole arrange- 
ment for the manufacturing arts led the great Whig statesman to draw 
such a picture of the calamity and distress that must follow a change 
of the tariff policy, how much greater, how much wider and deeper 
that distress would be with all the conditions he has described in- 
creased and multiplied ! 

The founders of the Eepublic, and its early statesmen, compre- 
hended this subject and understood that it was of the highest impor- 
tance to give protection to American industry and American labor. 
The second law of any kind that passed the Congress of the United 
States after the adoption of the Federal Constitution embodies the 
whole doctrine of the protective system in its first section, to wit : 

It is necessary for the support of the Government, for the discharge of the 
debts of the United States, and the encouragement and protection of manu- 
factures that duties be laid on goods and merchandise imported. 

Eevenue and protection are distinctly recognized. And if rev- 
enue was needed then to pay the obligations of the Government, how 
greater the necessity now. If the necessity existed then for the 
encouragement and protection of our manufactures, what of the 
necessity upon us to-day, when these manufactures, in the language 
of the distinguished gentleman from New York, " lie weakened and 
prostrated and sick almost unto death " ? 



THE WOOD TARIFF BILL. 15 

The Chairman. The gentleman's time has expired. 

Mr. Townsend, of Ohio, and Mr. Sayler moved that, by unanimous consent, 
the gentleman's time be extended. 

There was no objection, and it was ordered accordingly. 

I am greatly obliged to the gentlemen and to the House for the 
courtesy shown in extending my time. 

Mr. Chairman, we can only compete with foreign manufacturers 
by being placed upon an absolute equality with them, and until that 
equality is reached free trade — or, what is little better, tariff revision 
— is simply impracticable and vicious. We have disadvantages in the 
United States that can only be overcome by a wise discrimination 
in favor of American and against foreign manufactures. 

It may be asked. What disadvantages does America labor under 
not common to other countries ? And I answer, that while we have 
natural advantages equal to any, skilled mechanics, improved ma- 
chinery, and industrious labor comparable with the best, we lack 
the accumulated capital, long and well-established trade, and that 
other important species of capital which alone can come from ex- 
perience. 

Again, we pay higher wages to the labor that enters into the man- 
ufactured article. We pay a higher rate of interest for the money 
used in the manufacturing business of this country. 

No man or party would be bold enough to advocate the reduction 
of labor as a naked proposition, but rather its increase. But, Mr. 
Chairman, behind this bill, underneath its provisions, as I shall at- 
tempt to show you later, is inevitable reduction of the price of labor 
all over the country. The price of labor to-day is inadequate to the 
necessities of the laboring men, and the workingmen of the country 
are patiently accepting the inevitable in the hope of relief and better 
times in the very near future. And while I would rejoice at the 
reduction of the rate of interest for the use of money and the decrease 
of local taxation, I must protest against this or any other measure 
which looks to the scaling down of the wages of labor, although it 
might enable us to compete more advantageously with the foreign 
manufacture or to accept free trade wholly. 

The rich stores of American manufactures exhibited at the Cen- 
tennial Exposition at Philadelphia, rivaling the exhibits of all na- 
tions, commanded the admiration of the civilized world and was the 
constant wonder of the foreigner. They exceeded his expectations, 
and the frequent inquiry was, " What has accomplished all this ad- 
vance in a single century of the Republic ? " And the whole answer 



16 SPEECHES AND ADDRESSES OP WILLIAM McKINLEY. 

is contained in this statement, " Chiefly in consequence of the pro- 
tection afforded manufacturers by the tariff." 

This bill means reduced wages to operatives. It means the clos- 
est, sharpest competition among manufacturers at home with manu- 
facturers abroad. It means the closest economy of the price in the 
article produced. And the very first step taken in the direction of 
j economy on the part of the manufacturer is to reduce the wages he 
/ ' pays to his laborer ; not because he loves to do it, but because the 
exigencies of his business demand it. That has always been so, and 
\^the present and future will be no exception to the past. 

^" Why, we can even see this tendency underlying the great speech 
of the Chairman of the Committee of "Ways and Means made on 
Tuesday last. He uses this language : 

The total exports of iron and the manufactures of iron for the fiscal year 1877 
was 18,089,540, thus showing that the appi'ehension arising from the competition 
of foreign mechanics with American workmen has now little force. 

And as further showing that such apprehension is without foun- 
dation he states that — 

It was put in evidence before the Committee of Ways and Means, by Mr. 
Roach, the celebrated American iron-ship builder, that he readily obtained work- 
men in Pennsylvania at fx'om fifty to sixty cents per day. 

Mr. Chairman, I grant you, if workmen can be obtained readily at 
from fifty to sixty cents a day, there need be no serious apprehension 
arising from competition of foreign manufacturers. But if this be 
true, is it to remain so? Is it to continue? Is the present low price 
of labor, arising from causes not connected with the tariff, to be 
taken advantage of to inaugurate a system which will still further 
depress labor ? The argument of the gentleman from New York, 
showing our ability to compete with foreign workmen and foreign 
manufacturers, is based upon the presumption that from fifty to sixty 
cents a day is what the workingmen are receiving in this country, 
and that it is to continue. We do not want fifty- cent labor, even 
though it might enable us to adopt what the gentleman from New 
York is pleased to term " political economies purely American." 

He then quotes approvingly Mr. Isaac Southerin Bell, member of 
Parliament, the English Judge at the Centennial Exposition in Phila- 
delphia, on his report upon the iron interest of the United States, in 
which he declares that " the increased value of labor in the United 
States has unduly added to the cost of iron, and the demands from 
certain sections of the workman are now acting adversely to the true 



THE WOOD TARIFF BILL. 17 

interests of the trade " ; which means that labor is too high — that the 
price of labor in the United States has unduly added to the cost of 
iron, and is now acting adversely to the true interests of trade. 

The distinguished gentleman from New York [Mr. Hewitt], in 
his report on the production of iron and steel in its economic and 
social relations, as Commissioner to the Paris Exposition in 1867, 
puts the case in its true light. This was eleven years ago, but the 
same principle exists to-day : 

We have seen that the cost of making iron in England, Belgium, and France 
at the present time varies from £6 10s. to £8 per ton, an(i £1 additional suffices 
to pay its cost of transportation to the seaboard of the United States. At these 
ports American iron can not possibly be delivered at less cost than $60 per ton in 
gold against $40 in gold for the foreign article, and the entire difference consists 
in the higher wages and not the larger quantity of labor required for its produc- 
tion in the United States, where the physical, mental, and moral condition of the 
working classes occupy a totally different standard from their European con- 
freres, and where the wages can not be reduced without violating our sense of the 
just demands of human nature. 

Reduce the tariff, and labor is the first to suffer. The differ- 
ence between the present and the proposed rate of duty must be made 
up somewhere, must be compensated in some way. As always has 
been the case, when economy in production is to be studied, the man- 
ufacturer looks to his pay roll of labor and commences there first. 
In the language of the gentleman from New York [Mr. Hewitt], 
"the difference is in the higher wages paid," and that difference 
must be removed ; the tariff must be maintained, or the manufac- 
turers will be ruined. 

I cite further authority upon this subject, and I read the follow- 
ing extract from a pamphlet issued by the American Iron and Steel 
Association on February 12, 1878 : 

Protection will always be necessary if we would pay our skilled and unskilled 
workingmen higher wages than are paid in the Old World. Protection is largely, 
although not wholly, a question of wages. Free trade ignores the welfare of the 
workingmen, and therefore does not concern itself with their wages except to re- 
duce them. If our people were content to receive the wages that are paid abroad, 
if they were willing to accept the scant comforts and squalid surroundings of 
European workingmen and their families, it is possible that protection might be 
abandoned and our manufactures still live ; but they will not be content with 
such rewards for their labor, nor would it be for the best interests of society and 
the Nation that they should be. ... A reduction of duties at this time would not 
only still further reduce the wages of labor, but would cause the stoppage of 
industrial establishments in every State of the Union, thus increasing the distress 
and the jealousy of workingmen toward employers, which it should be the object 
of all wise legislation to mitigate. 



18 SPEECHES AND ADDRESSES OP WILLIAM McKINLEY. 

I have here a comparative table of the price of labor at the ship- 
yards in Scotland and in America in January, 1878. I take it from 
a little book published by a very intelligent gentleman, Mr. Codman, 
which he entitles Free Ships, the Kestoration of the American Car- 
rying Trade, issued in 1878. This, I am assured, will serve as a fair 
comparison of the prices paid in the United States and in Great 
Britain in other branches of industry, although not by any means 
conclusive. The table is as follows : 

COMPARATIVE TABLE OF PRICES OF LABOR PER DAT OF TEN HOURS IN SCOTLAND 

AND THE UNITED STATES. 



Branches of Industry. 



Shipyards. 

Carpenters 

Joiners 

Blacksmiths 

Platers 

Riveters 

Laborers 

Angle-iron smiths 

Riggers 

Hammer men 

Holders-up 

Engine and boiler works. 

Smiters , 

Hammer men 

Angle-iron smiths 

Boiler platers 

Riveters and calkers 

Holders-up 

Iron turners 

Iron finishers 

Engine fitters and erectors 

Planing machinists 

Shaping machinists 

Slotting machinists 

Pattern makers 

Carpenters 

Joiners 

Engine drivers 

Laborers 



Scotland. 


United States. 


$1 40 


$2 36 


1 45 


2 48 


1 30 


2 18 


1 30 


2 25 


1 15 


2 07 


75 


1 31 


1 25 


1 89 


1 35 


2 03 


85 


1 91 


85 


1 51 


1 32 


1 35 


85 


1 91 


1 30 


1 91 


1 41 


2 25 


1 25 


2 07 


94 


1 51 


1 29 


2 25 


1 20 


2 48 


1 23 


2 47 


1 13 


2 25 


1 03 


2 25 


1 06 


2 25 


1 51 


2 70 


1 40 


2 36 


1 10 


2 70 


91 


2 25 


80 


1 31 



Mr. Codman is a strong advocate of free ships, and uses this table 
for the purpose of showing that owing to the difference of the prices 
of labor ships can not be built equally cheap and well in this country 
as abroad. He presents the real arguments of the free trader hon- 
estly and without guise, as will be seen from the extracts which I 
now read : 



THE WOOD TARIFF BILL. 19 

Now, although the figures given in the table ought to be convincing at a 
glance, it is easy for any one with an ordinary knowledge of arithmetic to make a 
close calculation of the labor difference in cost of British and American steam- 
ships of the same quality. 

Naturally in this line of argument I shall be met by the oft-repeated ques- 
tion, " Do you then advocate the reduction of the wages of our mechanics to the 
level of ' pauper labor ' in Scotland ?"...! maintain that in the particular 
industry of ship owning, so long as the necessity for higher wages is imposed upon 
us, we ought to avail ourselves of any labor, pauper or otherwise. 

This is the whole doctrine of free trade and of tariff reform. We 
might as well understand the question now and here. It is a question 
of the price of labor, or of whether in several branches of industry we 
shall have any labor at all. ^ 

Mr. Chairman, self-preservation is the first law of nature, as it is \> 
and should be of nations. The general welfare is of paramount im- 
portance, and any measure which does not keep this steadily in view, 
which does not foster and encourage American labor and American 
industry, is in opposition to the great law of life, and subversive of 
the principles upon which governments are established. We want to 
be independent in that broad and comprehensive sense, strong within I 
ourselves, self-supporting and self-sustaining in all things. -rrrssJJ* 

It is our duty, and we ought to protect as sacredly and assuredly 
the labor and the industi-y of the United States as we would protect 
her honor from taint or her territory from invasion. We ought to 
take care of our own Nation and her industries first. We ought to 
produce for ourselves as far as practicable, and then send as much 
abroad as is possible— the more the better. If our friends abroad 
think this position illiberal, they have only to bring their capital and 
energy to this country, and then they will share with us equally in 
all things. 

This was the policy of England all through the early years of her 
history, only tenfold more rigorous. Down to 1843 her tariff amount- 
ed to absolute prohibition, and it was only when capital had accumu- 
lated, vast industries were built up, and well-established trade was 
secured, that she sought other markets. With skilled mechanics, 
with improved machinery, with accumulated capital, and with cheap 
labor, she believed herself able to supply the markets of the world and 
defy competition. Then free trade was conceived as the true and 
only policy, and all nations were invited to embrace this new and 
catholic theory of so-called political reform. 

The United States did not embrace this new theory, and England 
is to-day seriously considering the question of abandoning free trade. 



20 SPEECHES AND ADDRESSES OF WILLIAM McKlNLEY. 

The manufacturers and laboring men of that country are discussing 
it, willing to flee from that which promised them increased wages and 
greater comforts, but which has brought them neither. 

I listened attentively to the carefully considered speech of the 
gentleman from New York [Mr. Wood], waiting to hear of some 
American interest which was demanding this new legislation, and at 
last I was rewarded for my patience. He sent a letter to the clerk's 
desk to be read, from Messrs. Worthington & Co., of Jackson, Michi- 
gan, manufacturers of agricultural implements, who declared them- 
selves in favor of the bill, and that they were able to import steel to 
this country, manufacture it into agricultural implements, and send 
it back again at a profit. This was a strange statement and entirely 
inexplicable until the distinguished gentleman from Michigan [Mr. 
Conger], always on the alert, stated to the House that this firm, which 
was well known to him, did their work with the convict labor of 
Michigan at thirty-two cents a day. No other statement was needed. 
This was the only interest the whole country over, which the gentle- 
man furnished as satisfied with the proposed change. Comment is 
unnecessary, for when we commence to employ convict labor I will 
concede free trade is practicable. 

If the oft-repeated argument be true that the duty falls upon the 
consumer, then I ask the Committee of Ways and Means upon what 
principle of fairness or equity have they increased the duty on sugar, 
the necessity of the poor man's table, and decreased it upon silks and 
satins, which go to make up the elegant apparel of the rich ? Or why 
increase the duty on other staples of the poor man's household, and 
decrease it upon velvets, which are only accessible to the wealthy, and 
which the independent classes alone can buy ? 

Again, this Committee have imposed a duty of twenty cents a 
bushel upon wheat, and they have suffered wheat ground into flour to 
come into this country free — an unjust discrimination against every 
flour manufacturer in the land. Again, they have under their bill 
suffered cloths, manufactured cloths, to come into this country at 
fifty per cent ad valorem j and in that same bill they allow the cloths 
made into clothing for wearing apparel to come in for forty-five per 
cent duty — a discrimination against every manufacturer of clothing, 
every tailor, every sewing woman, the country over. 

They have reduced the duty upon scrap iron, wrought and cast ; 
and what will be the result? Why, it will throw thousands of men 
out of employment, and will wholly destroy the vocation of the pud- 
dlers of the land. 



THE WOOD TARIFF BILL. 21 

The bill in some cases protects the raw material, while the manu- 
factured article is practically free of duty or largely reduced. 

Why should rye, oats, and Indian corn be dutiable, and buckwheat, 
buckwheat flour, bran, mill feed, etc., be on the free list ? 

Is the duty on rye flour for revenue or for protection ? 

During the fiscal year ended June 30, 1877, the duty on rye flour 
yielded a revenue of forty-five cents. 

They have destroyed the entire classification of wools. They 
suffer noncompeting and competing wools to come in at the same 
rate of duty. They have broken down the more reasonable classifi- 
cations which have been approved by the wool grower and accepted 
by the trade, and now they are all to come in at the same rate, 
whether we grow the wool in this country or not. 

Mr. Chairman, the proposed bill is a piece of patchwork, and 
abounds in inconsistencies. It is an attempt to conciliate two schools 
of political science and pleases neither. It has marched out into the 
broad field of compromise and come back with a few supporters, it is 
true, who were opposed to the original bill as reported. It is neither 
free trade, tariff reform, nor protective tariff. It has none of the vir- 
tues of either, but the glaring faults of all systems. It is an attempt 
to change a law which does not improve the old one. It is an experi- 
ment opposed by all experience. It introduces uncertainty into the 
business of this country when certainty is essential to its life. I can 
not better characterize it than by quoting the language of the distin- 
guished gentleman from New York [Mr. Wood] in speaking of a 
tariff bill pending in June, 1864, in this House. Speaking of that 
bill (and his words seem prophetic as applied to his own), he said : 
" The Committee has given us a bill which I regard as an exceedingly 
crude and improper measure"; and that is what the country has 
already said of the pending bill, and it is what I believe will be the 
verdict of this House when a vote is reached. 

What the country wants above all else at this critical period is 
rest — rest from legislation, safety and security as to its basis of busi- 
ness, certainty as to the resources of the Government, immunity 
from legislative tinkering. None of these are afforded by the present 
bill. 

Mr. Chairman, much discussion has been had at this session 
touching the maintenance of the National credit, in which purpose I 
most heartily concur. The National credit is of paramount impor- 
tance, and nothing should be done to tarnish or impair it, nothing 
omitted to strengthen and improve it. But will the Congress of the 



22 SPEECHES AND ADDRESSES OF WILLIAM McKINLEY. 

United States be reminded that in no way can you more surely 
maintain the National credit than by assiduously maintaining the 
great industries of the country which for the most part constitute 
the Nation's wealth. 

There can be no permanent credit which is not based upon the 
labor, the capital, and the wealth of the Nation. Destroy the latter, 
and at the same moment the former is destroyed. The bill before us 
impairs the revenues pledged to the Government creditor and endan- 
gers the material interests of the country. Beware lest in your effort 
to pattern after the English policy you do not at the same time sap 
the foundations and destroy the true source of our National credit. 
The National credit is inseparably associated with our National 
growth and prosperity, and if you touch the latter with an unfriendly 
hand, you will seriously injure the former. 

There probably never was a period in the history of this country 
when business was more paralyzed and labor so depressed as the 
present. I need not pause to discuss the cause (it is not the result 
of our policy, for free-trade England is no better) ; the fact stands 
forth bidding us see and read that trade is everywhere languishing, 
and willing hands can find nothing to do. 

The demands for labor have been decreasing under the pinching 
times of the last five years, and manufactories, even with the present 
protection, have been fighting against the business revulsions which 
have swept over the country since 1873 ; and now that daylight is 
gleaming and improvement seems at hand, Congress sounds the alarm 
that protection is to be withdrawn, that another shock is coming, 
that the currents of business are to be turned aside and the existing 
basis of trade destroyed, and the whole business world is alarmed. 
And we are told that this is wise legislation, based upon sound 
principle. 

Mr. Chairman, there never was a time in the history of this coun- 
try more inauspicious than the present for the dreamer and the theo- 
rist to put into practical operation his impracticable theories of 
j)olitical science. The country does not want them; the business 
men of the country do not want them.| They want quiet to recuper- 
ate their wasted forces ; and I am sure I utter no sentiment new or 
original when I say that if this House will promptly pass the appro- 
priation bills and other pressing legislation, and follow it with an 
immediate adjournment, the people will applaud such a course as the 
work of statesmen and the wisdom of men of affairs. 



CONGKESSIONAL GERRYMANDERING. 

Speech on Accepting a Renomination to Congress, at 
Massillon, Ohio, August 7, 1878. 

Mr. President and Gentlemen of the Convention : In 
response to your action to-day, I have a grateful duty to perform. 
It is, to acknowledge, as best I can, the high honor you have 
done me in tendering me so heartily and unanimously the nomina- 
tion for Congress in the new Sixteenth District, This is peculiarly 
gratifying to me, when I consider that this is the first convention 
under the new Congressional apportionment, with three counties, 
hitherto strangers in this political relation, all having distinguished 
citizens who would dp honor to the nomination, and each with 
popular favorites who would command the confidence and support of 
the Republicans of the district. I thank you, therefore, most cor- 
dially for the partiality and confidence implied by the nomination ; 
and in accepting it, I assure you that, with your aid and the assist- 
ance of the constituency which you represent, nothing shall be 
omitted upon my part to achieve a party success which will overturn 
and render forceless the machinations of the Democratic Legislature 
to defraud Republicans of their just representation. 

The act of the Legislature in reapportioning the counties into 
Congressional districts, at an irregular period, is without precedent 
in Ohio since the organization of the Republican party, and without 
example under the present Constitution. For thirty-three years the 
unbroken rule has been to form such districts after each Federal 
census, and at the end of every ten years, such political subdivisions 
to remain unchanged until the next census. This secures a repre- 
sentation based upon the actual number of inhabitants disclosed at 
each census, according to the ratio of representation fixed by the 
Congress of the United States. No innovation has been made 
upon this rule since 1845, and then but a partial one. Parties have 



24 SPEECHES AND ADDRESSES OP WILLIAM McKINLEY. 

changed in numerical strength within that period, political suprema- 
cy has alternated from one to the other of the great parties, partisan 
hate has been intense and bitter, party necessities have been great 
and overshadowing. The majority force has existed many times 
before, in both political parties, but no Legislature from 1845 to 1878 
was found so reckless of principle and precedent as to destroy these 
political subdivisions between the decennial periods. 

This action alone, it seems to me, is sufficient, when rightly un- 
derstood, to react upon its authors and secure for them a crushing 
defeat. It can not be too frequently brought to the attention of the 
people, nor too severely denounced. It works a vital disfranchise- 
ment of a large body of Eepublicans under color of law by a shameful 
abuse of power and in violation of the spirit of the Constitution of 
the State and of the United States. 

The apportionment preceding the present one was made in 1872, 
by the Republicans, who were then in power in the State. It was 
made at the regular stated period following the census of 1870. And 
though the Democratic party had control of the Legislature in 1873, 
only one year after this apportionment, and when but one election 
had been held under it, they did not deem it wise nor judicious to 
disturb it. This, too, in the presence of the fact that in 1872 the Re- 
publicans elected one more member of Congress than they did in 
1876, the election preceding the present gerrymander. If this appor- 
tionment was unfair and manifestly unjust, why was the change not 
then made? If it was unfair in 1878, it Avas unfair in 1873. It was 
canvassed and discussed there and then, but public sentiment in the 
Democratic party and among the people condemned it. The only 
possible justification for such a scheme would be to defeat gross and 
manifest injustice. Did the districting bill of 1872 thus operate to 
the prejudice of the people, or to the Democratic party ? I have taken 
the trouble to examine the vote of the respective parties in this State 
for the last twenty-five years to the end that I might, if possible, by 
comparison, determine the fairness of Congressional apportionments 
in that time. 

Let us review the figures for a single moment : By the ratio of 
representation fixed by Congress, the State was entitled to twenty-one 
members of Congress under the census of 1850 ; to nineteen members 
in 1860 ; and to twenty members in 1870. The Democratic party 
made the Congressional apportionment after the census of 1850, 
while the Republicans made the next two succeeding apportionments. 

In 1856 the Republicans carried the State by a majority of 16,623, 



CONGRESSIONAL GERRYMANDERING. 25 

electing twelve Congressmen, while the Democrats elected nine. This 
was under a Democratic apportionment. 

In 1874 the Democrats carried the State by a majority of 17,202, 
an excess of only six hundred over the Kepublican majority of 1856 ; 
yet the Democrats elected thirteen Congressmen and the Republicans 
but seven. This was under a Republican apportionment. 

In 1862 the Democrats carried the State by a majority of 5,577, 
electing fourteen Congressmen, while the Republicans elected but 
five. In 1876 the Republicans carried the State by a majority of 
6,636, an excess of more than one thousand over the Democratic 
majority of 1862, the Republicans electing twelve Congressmen and 
the Democrats eight. These two elections were both under Repub- 
lican apportionments. These comparisons are drawn from three 
decennial periods, and present a degree of fairness alike creditable to 
both political parties. 

Again, it will be found that in every Congressional election for 
the past twenty-four years or more, wherein the Democrats have car- 
ried the State by a popular majority, they have uniformly elected a 
majority of the Congressional delegation. Under the new law, taking 
the vote of 1876 as a basis, when the Republicans carried the State 
by over 6,000, the Democrats will have twelve Congressmen and the 
Republicans eight. The redistricting was not in the interest of 
fairness, but to increase Democratic representation, in violation of 
every principle of fairness. It was not the work of the masses of the 
Democratic party in the State ; it was not the creation of the better 
class of our political opponents; it met with opposition from the 
order-loving and law-abiding citizens alike of both parties. It was 
ordered by designing politicians at Washington, to secure power in 
the next House, right or wrong ; and the Ohio Legislature, which 
had before always stood with a " face of flint " against every species 
of revolution, yielded, basely yielded, principle and justice for purely 
party ends. 

In our own district it met with strenuous opposition from the 
Democracy. In every district in the State there are Democrats who 
spurn it and will not assist in securing a victory made possible by 
such methods. The Wayne County Democrat, of May 1, 1878, 
voiced the sentiments of this class in these bold, prophetic words : 

For this Democratic Legislature to enact a law tearing up and reforming Con- 
gressional districts would be as gross and offensive partisanship as was the enact- 
ment of the registration law by the Republican Legislature, and the people 
would visit a rebuke upon the Democratic party by handing the State over to the 



26 SPEECHES AND ADDRESSES OF WILLIAM McKINLBY. 

Republican party. Why did not the Sixty-first General Assembly, which was 
Democratic, repeal the present redistricting law, and enact a more equitable 
measure in its stead ? Its propriety was discussed, but the conclusion arrived at 
was that it was impracticable. Only one election had been held under the law, 
and now two have been held under it since. Why undertake to disturb it now? 
The answer is, " We should guarantee, beyond a doubt, a clear Democratic major- 
ity in the next Federal House of Representatives." Shall the General Assembly 
of the State of Ohio assist in doing this, and Democrats thereby guarantee a Re- 
publican majority in the State at the next election and in the next General 
Assembly, which will be charged with the duty of electing a United States 
Senator ? 

This language is worthy the careful thought of the good men of 
all parties ; the whole purpose is disclosed — to " guarantee a clear 
Democratic majority in the next Federal House of Kepresentatives." 
And why ? After the 4th of March next the Senate will be Demo- 
cratic ; a Democratic House means turning over the entire legisla- 
tive branch of the Government to the Democratic party. In the lan- 
guage of this Democratic paper, it is to be accomplished by " tearing 
up " Congressional districts, after one preceding Democratic Legisla- 
ture had discussed it but found " it was impracticable." Shall this 
" tearing up " to secure Democratic control in both Houses of Con- 
gress be approved and adopted by the people of the State ? Reflect 
what a dangerous precedent it establishes ; only four years until the 
next regular period, and but two elections to be held ! Three elec- 
tions have already been held under it, and out of these three the 
Democrats have carried one. If you can " tear up " districts once in 
six years, you can reform them every two years. Each incoming Leg- 
islature will take control of the subject. Congressional districts will 
be the toy of unscrupulous and ambitious partisans of both political 
parties and will become the creation of party connivance. It is a 
perilous experiment, fraught only with mischief and evil, and the 
party, whichever it may be, that profits by it, will not long enjoy its 
victory. 

A little more than sixty days and we will have another important 
election. The political parties are in the field, their platforms of 
principles are announced, candidates have been placed in nomination, 
and the contest is fairly inaugurated. We enter the field in Ohio 
with our party unbroken by dissensions, and fully aroused to the im- 
portance of victory ; with a record challenging the closest scrutiny ; 
with a platform wise, strong, and outspoken ; with a State ticket of 
unblemished character, unquestioned integrity and fitness. Nothing 
is wanting to insure a complete victory but the earnest and active 



CONGRESSIONAL GERRYMANDERING. 27 

work of Republicans everywhere. As a party we have no bad record 
to explain, no party utterances to be withdrawn, no policy demanding 
a defense ; our principles and practices commend themselves to the 
conscience and intelligence of the people, and with these we go to the 
country deserving success, and confident that a deserved victory will 
be won. 

On the great political questions which are the subject of public 
thought and discussion, we have not only been right in the past, but 
we are right at the present time. On the question of the currency, 
I may thus briefly summarize : The Eepublican party created the 
greenback and made it a legal tender, as expressed on its face. It 
has stood by it ever since its creation, " through evil as well as good 
report." It has protected it from Democratic assault, making it 
constitutional in opposition to the decision of Democratic Supreme 
Judges of the United States. Only a few years ago we were wont to 
hear from Democratic statesmen and the Democratic press of the 
country, that "President Grant packed the Supreme Court for the 
purpose of maintaining the constitutionality of the greenback." 
When, but for the increase of the number of Supreme Judges author- 
ized by law, which the Democrats are pleased to term " packing," the 
old greenback, issued in time of war, solely as a war measure, to fur- 
nish money to prosecute the war successfully, would have been held 
unconstitutional, and deprived of its legal-tender power. The Repub- 
lican party has been the guardian of the greenback at every step of 
its existence, first preserving it as money and preventing its deprecia- 
tion, then appreciating it, until its value at last equals its face value 
and is the equivalent of coin. 

While the Republican party was thus maintaining and appreciat- 
ing it, the Democratic party was engaged in the work of destroying 
it. George H. Pendleton, now Senator-elect to the United States 
Senate from Ohio, on January 29, 18G2, while a Representative in 
Congress, used the following language in opposition to greenbacks : 

They will inevitably depreciate. The wit of man has never discovered a 
means by which paper money can be kept at par value except by its speedy cheap 
convertibility into gold and silver, I need not cite gentlemen to history or au- 
thorities — or writers on political economy — to prove it. Unless convertible they 
have always depreciated ; they will depreciate ; they ought to depreciate, because 
they are only valuable as the representatives of gold or silver ; and if they are not 
convertible into that which they represent, they must necessarily lose their value. 
You send these notes out into the world stamped with irredeemability. Yoii put 
on them the mark of Cain, and, like Cain, they will go forth to be vagabonds and 
fugitives on earth. 
3 



28 SPEECHES AND ADDRESSES OF WILLIAM McKINLEY. 

Allen G. Thurman, the present Senator from this State, as late as 
1867, when a candidate for Governor on the Democratic ticket, in a 
speech delivered at Waverly, Ohio, on August 5th, in speaking of a 
period in the past — thirty years or more ago — when he as a boy had 
addressed a political meeting at that place, made this declaration : 

Then we had a currency of gold and silver or their equivalent. Now we have 
rags, and only rags. 

The Stark County Democrat, a leading organ of the party in this 
portion of the State, as late as 1873, thus spoke : 

Some of our learned journals clamor for more inflation, on the principle, we 
suppose, of '• the hair of the dog curing the bite," like the trembling victim of 
alcohol demanding another dram ; but the prescriptions are as various as the 
physicians are numerous. Were we a member of Congress, after taking the oath 
to obey and abide by the Constitution of the United States, we should endeavor 
to have a little regard for that instrument. The Constitution prescribes that 
gold and silver only shall be a legal tender in payment of debts. Where does 
Congress get the power to flood the country with irredeemable paper currency of 
greenbacks f 

These quotations fully express what " the Ohio idea " was then, 
while the last two Democratic National platforms are in perfect 
accord with these sentiments. They serve to show the favor in which 
the greenbacks were then held by the party which to-day professes so 
much love for them, and which, in the language of their last State 
platform, demands " their perniatioit estahlishment as the sole paper 
money of the country.''^ In their whole history as a party in power 
in Congress, no single law can be found enacted by them favoring 
the greenback and securing it as a currency for the people. But it 
will be found that whatever legislation has been had upon the sub- 
ject looking to the stability and integrity of the greenback currency 
as a circulating medium for the people, it has either been proposed 
or enacted by the Kepublican party. 

With all their cry about the destruction of greenbacks by the 
Republican party and the contraction of the volume to three hundred 
millions under the Resumption Act, it was left to Mr. Fort, a Repub- 
lican member of Congress from the State of Illinois, to propose and 
secure the passage of a joint resolution, providing " that after the 
passage of this act it shall not be lawful for the Secretary of the 
Treasury, or other officers under him, to cancel or retire any more of 
the United States legal-tender notes ; and when any of said notes may 
be redeemed or received into the Treasury, under any law, from any 
source whatever, they shall not be retired, canceled, or destroyed, but 



CONGRESSIONAL GERRYMANDERING. 29 

they shall be reissued and paid out again and kept in circulation " ; 
which joint resolution joassed the House and Senate, was signed by a 
Kepublican President, and is now the law of the land. This law will 
prevent the reduction of greenbacks below three hundred millions, 
as provided for by the Eesumption Act, and maintains the present 
volume of 1346,681,000. 

In view of these facts, which are of record, and therefore can not 
be denied, what is left of the Democratic profession of undying love 
for the greenback ? And, except as experience and a better under- 
standing of our necessities may suggest future legislation, with what 
strict propriety did the Eepublican State convention declare this year 
in favor of ceasing forever so useless and costly an agitation ! Let 
me read that plank to you : 

2. The financial question having been disposed of by Congress, and the 
country at present needing repose in order that capital may seek investment and 
that industries may revive, thus increasing the demand for labor, the situation 
ought to be accepted ; and we oppose the further agitation of the question at this 
time as injurious to business and devoid of other than evil results. 

On the tariff question the Eepublican party by its platform, and, 
what is still better, its votes in the last House, stands committed to 
protection and opposed to free trade. It believes that the farmer, 
the laborer, and the manufacturer are alike interested in a protec- 
tion which shall foster and encourage our own industries, build up 
our manufactures, extend and enrich our own country. It defeated 
the " Wood Tariff Bill," as destructive of the best interests and 
business welfare of all classes, while every Democratic Congressman 
from the State of Ohio voted and labored for its passage. No meas- 
ure came before the Forty-fifth Congress which attracted so much 
attention and earnest solicitude ; all the industries of the country 
were alike concerned. Labor and capital united in protest against it, 
and yet it was barely defeated. It is one of the live questions of the 
hour, and its defeat last winter has by no means removed it from the 
arena of party discussion. " It will not down," and if any Democratic 
protectionist believes that it is not a political question and will not 
hereafter receive Congressional action, I need only to call his atten- 
tion to the Democratic State platform of this year, which declares for 
"a tariff for revenue only;" and to the significant language that Mr. 
Wood, the Chairman of the Committee of Ways and Means, uttered 
in his closing speech in the House, June 4, 1878. He said : 

The partisans of protection threaten to kill the bill by striking out the enact- 
ing clause. Well, suppose they accomplish this, what have they gained by it ? 



30 SPEECHES AND ADDEESSES OF WILLIAM McKINLEY. 

To defeat this measure does not prevent the introduction of another at the com- 
ing session, and one, too, that may be less acceptable. A movement of this 
character can not be annihilated by such a success of its enemies, which will be 
but temporary, especially when that success, if it shall be obtained, is gained 
without justice or reason, and without even a discussion of the principles involved. 
If the lateness of the session renders it impossible to consider the many important 
details of the bill at this time, I am willing to postpone their consideration and 
remove the bill for the present from the position it holds as a measure to be dis- 
• posed of now ; but if it shall be got rid of in the summary method referred to, 
I give notice that on the first day of the nest session I shall bring it again for- 
ward, and persevere in the effort to pass it into law until that shall be accom- 
plished. 

This menace of the Democratic leader of the House, the Chair- 
man of its most imjjortant Committee, clearly fixes the position of 
that party in relation to this subject and its determination to dis- 
turb existing tariff laws at the earliest practicable moment. It is an 
open threat to every manufacturer, wool grower, and laboring man 
in the country. 

Where can you find in the work of the Democratic party in the 
last House anything which commends it to the favor and support of 
the people ? It is true it furnished a doorkeeper, at the beginning of 
the session, who, by the votes of Eepublicans, was dismissed for mal- 
feasance in office. It is true that, without regard to the will of 
majorities or the law of the land, but to increase their power in the 
House, they unseated Republicans and put in their places Democrats 
who had never been elected. They created the Potter Committee, 
which, in the language of x\lexauder Stephens, " was a cyclone burst 
upon the House, and its only effect was to disturb the peace, har- 
mony, and quiet of the country " ; and from which, he declared, 
" nothing but a concert of action of the order and law-abiding people 
of all parties could arrest the most fearful consequences ; a movement 
which in the end will prove either a contemptible farce or a horrible 
tragedy." And, I may add, whichever of the two results shall follow, 
farce or tragedy, will depend in great measure upon the political com- 
plexion of the next House. Twenty thousand dollars have already 
been appropriated for the expenses of this Committee, and, with their 
seaside sessions and junketings over the country, what their future 
expenses will be the public may never know. 

The Forty-fourth Congress (Democratic) appropriated $375,000 
to pay mail contractors in Southern States, and the Secretary of the 
Treasury refused to disburse the same until all claims were presented. 
The Forty-fifth Congress sought to renppropriate and utilize it by 



CONGRESSIOXAL GERRYMANDERING, 31 

directing the Secretary " to begin at once to pay in full." This was 
a clear steal of the people's money, and as bald and bold a fraud as 
was ever perpetrated by an American Congress. This money, by the 
sheer vigilance of the Republican minority in the House, was saved 
to the people of the country. They destroyed the Soldiers' Roll in 
the House, which had existed since 1867, without destroying the 
salaries ; that is, they retained the usual salaries to be received by 
others, for whom they were not created. This was the permanent 
roll for the employment of crippled and disabled soldiers of the 
Union army, in and about the House, at a salary of 11,200 annually. 
The maimed and crippled soldiers were dismissed, and Democratic 
politicians, who had seen no military service, were put in their places, 
without precedent or warrant of law. 

They cast a dragnet into the official waters, but were successful 
in catching Democratic delinquents only. They reduced the tax 
upon whiskey and tobacco, and proposed to increase it upon sugar to 
maintain the revenues of the Government. What relief have thev 
brought to the suffering masses, whom they promised to " set upon 
their feet and crown with immortal wealth and unfailing plenty " ? 
Where is the fulfillment of their promise ? 

They increased the appropriations for 1878 over those of 1876 by 
828,752,265.49, while the last year of Republican rule there was a de- 
crease of 816,123,000 over the previous year. The total appropria- 
tions for last year were $143,317,323.92. The total appropriations 
for this year are $172,069,589.41. The increase this year is therefore 
$28,752,265.49. These aggregates cover all the regular appropriation 
bills. 

In the Presidential election of 1876 the chief rallying cry of the 
Democracy was " the reduction of expenses by the Forty-fourth Con- 
gress." Republicans familiar with the subject then asserted that it 
would be ascertained that much of the claim of reduced expenditures 
and Democratic economy would be found in the deficiency bills of 
the next Congress. This assertion has been more than verified. The 
total deficiencies for the Forty-fourth Congress reach the sum of 
$18,280,153.49, This is Democratic economy — refusing to appro- 
priate for the necessary expenses of the Government that the appro- 
priations may show a reduction over the previous year, for campaign 
purposes, and, when the election is over, to make up the reduction by 
deficiency bills. Is it to be wondered at that the Cincinnati Enquirer, 
the leading Democratic paper in Ohio, thus rebukes them for their 
broken promises : 



32 SPEECHES AND ADDRESSES OF WILLIAM McKINLEY. 

The Democratic party of Ohio carried the election last fall by professing to be 
the especial friend of the poor and oppressed. Thousands of Republicans who 
■were in debt voted our ticket, believing that their only hope of saving themselves 
from bankruptcy and ruin was to place the Democratic party in power, and thus 
save themselves from cruel and heartless creditors. By our professions we have 
been enabled to carry the Legislature, and thereby secure a United States Senator, 
but what promise have we fulfilled? We answer, None. 

Broken promises, disappointed hopes, increased appropriations, 
and threatened revolution — these are some of the trophies of Demo- 
cratic ascendency ! 

I can not at this time or place present to you, as I would like, the 
issues which divide the parties and their record, in and out of Con- 
gress, in detail, but shall reserve them for some other occasion in the 
coming canvass, when I hope to address you more at length. 

I am firm in the belief that we have a victory within reach, which 
can be secured by striving for it. The campaign is full of material, 
which should be employed and carried to the people, showing Demo- 
cratic faithlessness and the dangers of Democratic ascendency. No 
labor should be regarded too great to restore Republican control ; no 
effort should be spared in securing a result so essential to good govern- 
ment, and so necessary to the peace, order, and business prosperity of 
the country. 

In conclusion, I again thank you for the honor of your nomina- 
tion. 



FREE AND FAIR ELECTIONS. 

Speech in the House of Representatives, Forty-sixth 
Congress, April 18, 1879. 

[From the Congressional Record.] 

The House being in Committee of the Whole, for the consideration of the bill 
(H. R. No. 2) making appropriations for the legislative, executive, and judicial 
expenses of the Government for the fiscal year ending June 30, 1880, and for 
other purposes, Mr. McKinley said — 

Mr. Chairman : The first movement iu the programme of a re- 
stored Democracy has already been accomplished, so far as this House 
is concerned, in the paralyzation of the executive force to preserve 
peace at the polls. The second step in the same programme is only 
checked by a few intervening days, when the purity of the ballot-box 
is to be submitted to the same lawlessness, with no power in the Fed- 
eral head to insure or preserve it. 

The proposition offered by Mr. Southard in the closing hours of 
the Forty- fifth Congress, and for the most part now renewed in the 
extraordinary session of the present Congress, to repeal certain sec- 
tions of the statutes of the United States known as the Federal elec- 
tion laws, is a bold and wanton attempt to wipe from the law all pro- 
tection of the ballot-box, and surrender its purity to the unholy hand 
of the hired repeater and its control to the ballot-box stuffers of the 
great cities of the North and the tissue-ballot party of the South. 

So determined is the Democratic party in the House to break 
down these wise and just measures, intended to secure an honest bal- 
lot to the legal voter, that they make them a rider to an important 
appropriation bill, making them, in the language of my colleague 
[Mr. McMahon], " a necessary companion to the money voted in 
the bill." 

The repeal of these laws will remove every safeguard against fraud 
in the exercise of the elective franchise, and will again make possible 



34 SPEECHES AND ADDRESSES OP WILLIAM McKINLEY. 

tlie enormous outrages upon a pure ballot and free government which 
marked the elections in the city of New York and elsewhere in 1868, 
the wickedness and extent of which made existing laws necessary and 
imperative. The proposition we are now considering is an open as- 
sault upon the freedom and purity of elections. 

What are these laws which are to be repealed in so unusual and 
summary a manner ? Let us briefly examine them ; and, first, let me 
pause to refute the very general charge, so often made, that these 
laws interfere with State and local elections and encroach upon the 
rights and powers of the States. They do not apply to elections for 
State and local officers in any way. The States fix their own regula- 
tions, and these statutes have no force or operation upon the election 
machinery employed by the several States for their local elections. 
There is and can be no conflict between the State officers and the 
Federal supervisors and deputy marshals. The law applies and can 
only be invoked when there is an election for Eepresentative or Dele- 
gate to Congress. 

The supervisors provided for in this act are appointed in cities and 
towns of not less than twenty thousand inhabitants, upon the written 
application to the United States Circuit Court of two citizens of said 
city or town ; and shall be appointed in any county or parish in any 
Congressional district upon like application to said court of ten citi- 
zens of good standing, being citizens thereof. The supervisors, it will 
be observed, are to be appointed by the Circuit Court of the United 
States, not by the executive power of the Government nor upon the 
motion of any Federal executive or office-holder, but the application 
comes from the people themselves ; their number is limited to two for 
each election district or voting precinct, and they shall be of different 
political parties. 

Their duties are prescribed in sections 2016, 2017, and 2018 of the 
Kevised Statutes, to which I beg your attention : 

Sec. 2016. The supervisors of election, so appointed, are authorized and re- 
quired to attend at all times and places fixed for the registration of voters, who, 
being registered, would be entitled to vote for a Representative or Delegate in 
Congress, and to challenge any person offering to register ; to attend at all times 
and places when the names of registered voters may be marked for challenge, 
and to cause such names registered as they may deem proper to be so marked ; to 
make, when required, the lists, or either of them, provided for in section 2026, and 
verify the same ; and upon any occasion and at any time when in attendance upon 
the duty herein prescribed to personally inspect and scrutinize such registry, and 
for purposes of identification to affix their signature to each page of the original 
list, and of each copy of any such list of registered voters, at such times, upon each 



FREE AND FAIR ELECTIONS. 35 

day when any name may be received, entered, or registered, and in such manner 
as will, in their judgment, detect and expose the improper or wrongful removal 
therefrom, or addition thereto, of any name. 

Sec. 2017. The supervisors of election are authorized and required to attend 
at all times and places for holding elections of Representatives or Delegates in ' 
Congress, and for counting the votes cast at such elections ; to challenge any vote 
offered by any person whose legal qualifications the supervisors, or either of them, 
may doubt; to be and remain where the ballot-boxes are kept at all times after 
the polls are open until every vote cast at such time and place has been counted, 
the canvass of all votes polled wholly completed, and the proper and requisite cer- 
tificates or returns made, whether the certificates or returns be required under 
any law of the United States, or any State, Territorial, or municipal law, and to 
personally inspect and scrutinize, from time to time, and at all times, on the day 
of election, the manner in which the voting is done, and the way and method in 
which the poll-books, registry lists, and tallies or check-books, whether the same 
are required by any law of the United States, or any State, Territorial, or munici- 
pal law, are kept. 

Sec. 3018. To the end that each candidate for the office of Representative or 
Delegate in Congress may obtain the benefit of every vote for him cast, the su- 
pervisors of election are, and each of them is, required to personally scrutinize, 
count, and canvass each ballot in their election district or voting precinct cast, 
whatever may be the indorsement on the ballot, or in whatever box it may have 
been placed or be found ; to make and forward to the officer who, in accordance 
with the provisions of section 2025, has been designated as the chief supervisor of 
the judicial district in wliich the city or town wherein they may serve, acts, such 
certificates and returns of all such ballots as such officer may direct and require, 
and to attach to the registry list, and any and all copies thereof, and to any cer- 
tificate, statement, or return, whether the same, or any part or portion thereof, be 
required by any law of the United States, or of any State, Territorial, or municipal 
law, any statement touching the truth or accuracy of the registry, or the truth or 
fairness of the election and canvass, which the supervisors of the election, or either 
of them, may desire to make or attach, or which should properly and honestly be 
made or attached, in order that the facts may become known. 

Their duties, summarized, are as follows : 

1. To attend the registration of voters, who, being registered, 
would be entitled to vote for a Eepresentative or Delegate to Congress. 

2. To attend at the election held for a Eepresentative or Delegate 
to Congress. 

3. To guard and scrutinize such election. 

4. To witness, inspect, and report thereon, with the right of chal- 
lenge, and the right to personally scrutinize, count, and canvass each 
ballot, " to the end that each candidate for the office of Eepresenta- 
tative or Delegate to Congress may obtain the benefit of every vote 
for him cast." 

Section 3022 provides that supervisors, in the absence of the mar- 



36 SPEECHES AND ADDRESSES OF WILLIAM McKINLEY. 

shal and deputies, or if required to assist them, shall have the same 
duties and powers as is conferred upon deputy marshals by this act, 
which includes the power of arrest and the preservation of peace. 

The original purpose of the majority of this House was to repeal 
the entire body of the election laws, including that portion to which 
I have just called your attention. It is now proposed, under a more 
recent decree of the Democratic caucus, to strike down the deputy 
marshals only, and wrest from the supervisors the executive powers 
now vested in them. This modification is not important in itself, it 
is no concession in the interest of an honest election, but it is highly 
important and valuable in another view — that of the constitutionality 
of the law itself. During the brief discussion in the last House the 
most distinguished leaders of the Democratic party habitually de- 
clared the entire law, supervisors and all, wholly unconstitutional. 
They seem, since that time, to have read more carefully section 4 of 
Article I of the Constitution, which declares — 

The times, places, and manner of holding elections for Senators and Repre- 
sentatives shall be prescribed in each State by the Legislature thereof ; but the 
Congress may at any time by law make or alter such regulations, except as to the 
places of choosing Senators. 

Which constitutional provision confers upon Congress full and 
adequate power at any time to make or alter times, places, and man- 
ner of holding elections for Eepresentatives, and to make or alter 
such regulations. 

The Democratic party has thus abandoned the constitutional ob- 
jection by allowing the sections in relation to supervisors of elections, 
with some limitations, to remain. They surrender the constitutional 
doctrine so strenuously urged against existing law. My distinguished 
friend from Ohio [Mr. Hurd], and the gentleman from Kentucky 
[Mr. Carlisle], who addressed the Committee yesterday, seem not to 
have been present at the last caucus of their party, for their argu- 
ments are wholly based upon the constitutional question. Let me 
suggest to my friends that if the law is unconstitutional the courts 
are open to them, where that question can be judicially determined 
for all time ; and let me remind them that this law has been on the 
statute-book for now seven years, and the question they make, 
although decided adversely to their theory by an inferior court, has 
never found its way to the final tribunal in such cases — the Supreme 
Court of the United States. To that tribunal we invite them to go. 
I repeat, that permitting the supervisors' law to stand is a giving away 
of all constitutional objection to the entire body of the law. It ex- 



FREE AND FAIR ELECTIONS. 37 

plodes tlie old dogma of State rights, and removes all necessity for 
any discussion upon that point. 

Enough of the law is left to recognize the principle always con- 
tended for by the Kepublican party, that Congress had the power and 
that it was its plain duty to guard and protect elections where its 
own members were to be chosen to seats in this body ; but while 
admitting the constitutional right, they are careful to wipe out all 
the provisions which give such a law practical effect in securing an 
honest election and preventing force and fraud at the polls. They 
are in favor of the law, but opposed to its execution. Now, let us 
briefly review what is proposed to be stricken from the law. This 
statute provides for the appointment of special deputy marshals ; 
section 2031 prescribes the manner of their appointment, and section 
2022 prescribes their duties. I call your attention to them at length, 
because their careful reading will dispose of much of the misrepre- 
sentation which has been heaped upon them in debate, and correct 
much of the misapprehension which prevails concerning them : 

Sec. 2021. Whenever an election, at which Representatives or Delegates in 
Congress are to be chosen, is held in any city or town of twenty thousand inhabit- 
ants or upward, the marshal for the district in which the city or town is situated 
shall, on the application in writing of at least two citizens residing in such city 
or town, appoint special deputy marshals, whose duty it shall be, when required 
thereto, to aid and assist the supervisors of election in the verification of any 
list of persons who may have registered or voted ; to attend in each election 
district or voting precinct at the times and places fixed for the registration of 
voters, and at all times and places when and where the registration may by law 
be scrutinized, and the names of registered voters be marked for challenge ; and 
also to attend, at all times for holding elections, the polls in such district or 
precinct. 

Sec. 2022. The marshal and his general deputies, and such special deputies, 
shall keep the peace, and support and protect the supervisors of election in the 
discharge of their duties, preserve order at such places of registration and at 
such polls, prevent fraudulent registration and fraudulent voting thereat, or 
fraudulent conduct on the part of any ofiicer of election, and immediately, either 
at the place of registration or polling place, or elsewhere, and either before or 
after registering or voting, to arrest and take into custody, with or without pro- 
cess, any person who commits, or attempts or offers to commit, any of the acts or 
offenses prohibited herein, or who commits any offense against the laws of the 
United States ; but no person shall be arrested without process for any offense 
not committed in the presence of the marshal, or his general or special deputies. 
or either of them, or of the supervisors of election, or either of them ; and for the 
purposes of arrest or the preservation of the peace the supervisors of election 
shall, in the absence of the marshal's deputies, or if required to assist such 
deputies, have the same duties and powers as deputy marshals ; nor shall any 



38 SPEECHES AND ADDRESSES OP WILLIAM McKINLEY. 

person, on the day of such election, be arrested without process for any offense 
committed on the day of registration. 

As in the case of the supervisors, they have nothing to do with 
the election of State and local officers, and can only be appointed at 
an election for Representative or Delegate in Congress. They are to 
aid and assist the supervisors of election ; to keep the peace at the 
polls ; to preserve order, and protect the supervisors in the discharge 
of their duties. They are to prevent fraudulent registration and 
fraudulent voting. What honest man can object to provisions of law 
looking to such important results? They are to arrest and take into 
custody, with or without process, any person who commits, or at- 
tempts or offers to commit, any of the acts or offenses prohibited in 
this act, or who commits any offense against the laws of the United 
States. Great exception is made to that part of the law which 
authorizes the marshals to arrest without process. The impression is 
sought to be made that this power is exceptional and without any 
qualification, while an examination of the law itself shows that the 
power is carefully limited and guarded. My colleague [Mr. Hurd] 
falls into this error, and would leave — unintentionally, I have no 
doubt — a wrong impression of the law. Here is the language of the 
gentleman, found in his speech of April 1st : 

The third objection is, that these supervising officers are armed with author- 
ity unknown in the history of the common law or State laws. They have author- 
ity at the polls on the day of election to arrest, without warrant, any man whom 
they may suspect of being about to engage in a violation of the laws. There is 
no principle of common law or State law which can authorize the arrest of citi- 
zens on suspicion of an intention to commit an offense. 

My friend has not read the law aright, as he will observe. Here 
is the language of the statute : " But no person shall be arrested Avith- 
out process for any offense not committed in the presence of the 
marshal, or his general or special deputies." Arrest without process 
can only be made upon view of the crime committed in the presence 
of the officer, not upon suspicion or idle rumor, not upon informa- 
tion, but upon actual view. There is nothing exceptional in this 
law. It is as old as the common law ; it is the common law, as old 
as criminal jurisprudence ; it prevails everywhere throughout the 
country. The lowest executive officer to the highest is authorized to 
arrest a person whom he sees committing a crime against the laws of 
the country. In some of the States this power is reposed in every 
citizen. It is the power vested in every police officer of the land. 
And why should any distinction be made between the violators of 



FREE AND FAIR ELECTIONS. 39 

the general laws of the country and the violators of the election laws 
of the United States? This dangerous power, so called, is exercised 
by the police officers of the Capital City, yes, of the very Capitol 
itself. The deputy marshal stands in relation to this law as the 
policeman to the general laws against crimes and misdemeanors, and 
the same necessity exists for their appointment as for the mainte- 
nance of a city police force. If crimes against the election laws are 
committed before his eyes, and in the immediate presence of the 
officer, it is his duty to arrest without warrant. What honest man 
will object to this? Such offenders ought to be summarily taken 
into custody, and the public sentiment of the country, the common 
law, and public morals approve and justify. It is no infringement 
of the constitutional liberty of the citizen. The party arrested is 
to be forthwith brought before the commissioner or judge for 
examination of the offense alleged against him. If guilty, he is 
held to answer by the court; if not guilty, he is summarily dis- 
charged. 

This power, I admit, should be most carefully exercised, and only 
reposed in discreet and honest hands. The appointment of deputy 
marshals is confined to cities of twenty thousand inhabitants or 
upward. They can not be appointed in any Congressional district 
where there is no city of that population or greater. The country 
districts are not immediately interested in this provision. In Ohio 
not more than one fourth of the Congressional districts can invoke 
this provision of law. In the country and smaller towns deputy 
marshals are not needed ; here an honest election is secured by the 
watchful interest of a large body of fair-minded citizens. Fraud is 
difficult to commit where everybody is acquainted with his neighbors 
and where the legal voters are known to every citizen. Yet the voter 
in the country districts, indeed every voter throughout the land, is 
interested in free and honest elections everywhere, for without them 
his vote loses its legitimate force. An honest election in the country 
is of little significance if its true force is to be overcome by fraud in 
the large cities. Herein the interest becomes personal and imme- 
diate. In large cities the great bulk of the population are strangers 
to each other ; few citizens know their fellow-voters, and from neces- 
sity this is the case. Fraud is easily accomplished, and is inevitable, 
I may say, without the most rigorous safeguards and the firm en- 
forcement of law. 

I have tried fairly to meet and answer the principal objections 
urged to this law. Are there any others ? In the discussion had in 



40 SPEECHES AND ADDRESSES OP WILLIAM McKINLEY. 

the Forty-fifth Congress much stress was placed upon the great ex- 
pense attending the execution of the law. I learn that at Cincinnati, 
in my own State, the expense of deputy marshals, in 1878, was less 
than 1400, and they never had a fairer, purer election than at that 
time. But to this, in general terms, I answer. What signifies the cost, 
. if thereby we can secure a free and fair ballot in this country ? Who 
] will count the cost, if the enforcement of this law will prevent the 
.'repeaters and moonshiners from controlling the elections and sub- 
;i verting the popular will ? For involved in this proposition is the 
existence of the Republic and the perpetuation of republican institu- 
■ tions. If honest, fair elections can not be had, free government is a 
farce ; it is no longer the popular will which is supreme. Free gov- 
ernment can not be estimated by dollars nor measured by cost. We 
have long ago discarded that consideration. This objection has been 
urged many times before to the enforcement of great fundamental 
doctrines and principles. The same objection was urged to the pros- 
ecution of the war for the preservation of the Union and free govern- 
ment. Public sentiment did not listen then to the cry of cost ; it 
hesitated not, it faltered not then ; it ignored the cost ; it fought and 
successfully fought the great battle of freedom; and public sentiment 
will not now pause to count the paltry cost, when free and fair elec- 
tions, the foundation-stone of free government, are involved in the 
I threatened danger. If I do not misjudge, the people who fought 
j for free government and maintained it at so great a cost will now be 
I found firm and invincible for a free ballot and fair elections. Let 
I, me remind the other side of this Chamber that supervisors and mar- 
shals will not be needed, and therefore no cost will be incurred, 
whenever the party which employs tissue ballots and drives colored 
citizens from the polls shall do so no more forever, and whenever 
Democratic repeaters shall cease to corrupt the ballot — the great 
fountain of power in this country ; in a single sentence, whenever 
throughout this whole country, in every State thereof, citizenship is 
respected and the rights under it are fully and amply secured ; when 
every citizen who is entitled to vote shall be secure in the free exer- 
cise of that right, and the ballot-box shall be protected from illegal 
voters, from fraud and violence. Federal supervisors of Federal elec- 
tions will be neither expensive nor oppressive. 

Until then, the order-loving, patriotic citizen will insist, at any 
cost, upon some legislative measure or measures which will the more 
certainly protect the citizen in his right of suffrage, which is secured 
to him under the Constitution and the laws. 



FREE AND FAIR ELECTIONS. 41 

My colleague [Mr. McMahon] urges another reason for the re- 
peal of these laws. He says, in his speech in the last House : 

The marshal of the United States is the creature of the President. The spe- 
cial deputies are the mere creatures of the marshal. There is no law nor any gen- 
eral practice requiring them to be equally divided between the political parties. 
And if the Repuhlican marshal selects so-called Democratic deputies, it is to keep 
them quiet, or with the express or implied agi^ement that they will vote for or pos- 
sibly openly support the Republican ticket. 

What will the Democratic party think of this grave accusation 
from one of its party leaders : that for a consideration — and that, 
too, for an appointment as deputy marshal for a single day — Demo- 
crats will break away from old party affiliations, surrender their con- 
victions, and vote the Republican ticket ? Now, if this be the only 
objection, it can be avoided by an amendment, which the gentleman 
can offer at the proper time, prohibiting the appointment of any 
Democrat as deputy marshal, thus preventing the corruption of 
Democratic electors. [Applause.] 

Again, it is urged that the presence of supervisors and marshals 
intimidates the Democratic voter. Who ever heard of the presence i 
of an officer of the law deterring anybody from doing what he has a j j 
legal right to do ? Their presence is a restraint upon no honest voter, j j 
They prevent no citizen who is a legal voter by the laws of his State 
and the United States from freely and peacefully exercising that 
right. Their presence is his safeguard and security. They disfran- 
chise no man. They defraud no voter of his just rights under the 
law. Every legal voter is made safe in the exercise of his right of 
suffrage. In the practical operation of this law since 1872, I have 
heard of but one instance of injustice, the case of Peter Coleman, 
cited by my distinguished friend from New York [Mr. Hewitt], a 
member of the last House ; and although he alleges that four thou- 
sand arrests were made on election day in the city of New York in 
1878, he finds but one victim of oppression, and his restraint and 
imprisonment seem to have been self-imposed. I read from his 
[Mr. Hewitt's] remarks : 

Fortunately for the cause of liberty, out of these four thousand citizens thus 
summarily deprived of their freedom, . . . one man alone, so poor that he had 
no friends to become his bail, and so friendless that he seems not to have known 
that he might have walked away, was committed to jail, and allowed to lie there 
until by accident his case was made known in the proper quarter, and proceedings 
of habeas corpus were taken to test the question of the legality of these arrests. 
The name of that unfortunate citizen was Peter Coleman. 



42 SPEECHES AND ADDRESSES OF WILLIAM McKINLEY. 

How carefully and discreetly must this law have been administered 
when there can be found but one instance of injustice or wrong ! 

Has any legal voter in the United States been prevented from ex- 
ercising his right of suffrage by this law, or by the officers acting 
under it? This is the practical question. None that I have ever 
heard of ; while thousands, yes, tens of thousands of illegal voters 
have been deterred from voting by virtue of it. The honest voter has 
no fear of this law ; it touches him as lightly as the law of larceny 
touches the honest man, or the law of murder touches him whose 
hands are stainless of human blood. The thief hates the law of lar- 
ceny, the murderer the law of homicide. They, too, can truthfully 
urge the cost of the execution of these laws ; both are expensive and 
onerous to the taxpayer. But I have never known such arguments 
seriously entertained as a reason for their rejjeal. The law is without 
terror save to wrongdoers. The presence of officers of the law only 
deters criminals from the commission of crime. They are no re- 
stritint upon the honest man. You can form no system of laws 
which will not be open to some criticism and abuse. These prove 
nothing against the importance and necessity of their maintenance. 
If any better method can be offered for preserving the ballot-box 
in its purity, I will cordially accept it and labor for its passage, but 
until such better method is proposed we should stand by existing 
statutes. 

We can not afford to break down a single safeguard which has 
been thrown around the ballot-box. Every guarantee must be kept 
and maintained. Fair-minded people everywhere are interested in 
honest elections. It is not a partisan measure ; it falls alike upon all 
political parties. The law recognizes no political creed, and those 
who execute it should carefully obey its letter and spirit. It protects 
Democrats and Republicans and men of all parties alike. 

This House, not content with prohibiting the use of soldiers to 
keep the peace at the polls, forbidding their employment by the 
President in any emergency, however grave, now seeks to remove 
every remaining safeguard to a fair and honest election. The better 
sentiment of the country, North and South, will not submit to such 
unbridled license upon the ballot-box. Mr. Chairman, what will the 
end be ? By an amendment to an army appropriation bill which was 
not connected with the subject matter thereof, peace at the polls can 
no longer be maintained by the Chief Executive, no matter how grave 
the emergency nor how pressing the necessity. Tumult and riot may 
hold high carnival at a Federal polling place, and the Federal arm is 



FREE AND FAIR ELECTIONS. 43 

powerless to restrain it. This restriction of Federal power, this para- 
lyzation of executive authority, ought to have satisfied the most ex- 
treme State-rights Democrat ; but not so. Having forbidden the use 
of the executive force to keep the peace at the polls, they now de- 
mand that the purity of the ballot and the freedom of the voter shall 
be subjected to the same lawlessness, with no power in the Govern- 
ment to restrain it. 

Mr. Chairman, my purpose thus far has been to present this law, 
the repeal of which is demanded, upon its merits wholly. The prop- 
osition, however, of the Democratic side of the House is to offer this 
amendment not to the sober, independent judgment of the House 
and the co-ordinate branches of the Government, but to rush it 
through, right or wrong, justly or unjustly, as a part of a bill making 
appropriations for the pressing and needful wants of the Government. 
It is an attempt to do by force what ought to be done, if at all, in the 
free exercise of the law-making power by each branch of the Govern- 
ment acting in its proper functions under the Constitution. If force 
and coercion be not intended, then why not introduce and consider 
this legislation under the rules with deliberation and debate upon its 
own merits, independent and separate from an appropriation bill? 
This is the ordinary course of legislation, recognized by long practice, 
founded in wisdom, and never before abandoned for the purposes of 
coercion. Want of time can not be urged in favor of this course ; 
days of idleness have already been spent sufficient for the purpose. 
The resort to this method of legislation is a confession of the injus- 
tice, wrong, and weakness of the proposed measure, and evinces a 
determination to accomplish wrongfully that which can not be right- 
fully accomplished. One of the pretexts urged in favor of placing 
this amendment upon an appropriation bill is that the law itself was 
passed by the Republicans in the same way. This impression has be- 
come so general throughout the country that it would seem necessary 
to state the facts in relation to the passage of the Supervisors' law. 
The law, substantially as it is now in the statutes, was introduced 
into the House, referred to the Judiciary Committee, considei-ed by 
that Committee, and reported back to the House by its Chairman, 
where it was discussed, voted upon, and passed entirely independent 
of any appropriation bill. It took the same course in the Senate. It 
was not a rider to a bill appropriating money. It is true that the 
sections extending the supervisors to county districts and restricting 
their powers in such districts were passed June 10, 1873, upon the 
Sundry Civil Appropriation Bill. 
4 



44 SPEECHES AND ADDRESSES OP WILLIAM McKINLEY. 

Not to coerce the President or the Senate, not to obtain what 
could be obtained in no other way, for all of the branches of the Gov- 
ernment were then in political accord. 

I have not stated it as strong as the gravity of the case justifies. 

, , The proposition is to grant no money for the necessary expenses of 

\ the Government in its several departments unless the Executive affix 

' his signature to a bill which he may not approve. This doctrine was 

boldly announced by the distinguished Senator from my own State 

[Mr. Thurman] in the closing hours of the Forty-fifth Congress. 

That I may do him no injustice, let me give you his exact language : 

But that countervailing influence, that countervailing power, was supposed 
to be found in the fact that all money bills must originate in the House of Hep- 
resentatives ; that the House should hold the purse-strings, and should say, as 
our forefathers in England had said to the lords and king, " We will only grant 
supplies upon condition that grievances are redressed." 

I grant it may be an extreme measure for the House of Representatives to 
affix upon an appropriation bill such provisions as are contained in this bill. 

We claim the right, which the House of Commons ia England established 
after two centuries of contest, to say that we will not grant the money of the peo- 
ple unless there is a redress of grievances. 

The Senator from Kentucky [Mr. Beck] was equally pronounced, 

while in the House there seemed to be but one sentiment among 

the Democrats, which was, that these laws must be repealed or the 

machinery of the Government must stop. Mr. Southard, who was 

designated by the caucus of his party to present the proposition to 

repeal the law relating to supervisors of elections, declared in his 

j speech, " Let the issue come now. Not a dollar of the appropriations 

;. should be voted until this most reasonable redress of grievances is 

\ conceded." And applause from his Democratic colleagues followed 

j this revolutionary utterance. Another colleague [Mr. McMahon] 

was no less emphatic. He says : 

It is our duty to repeal these laws. It is not worth while to attempt the re- 
peal except upon an appropriation bill. The Republican Senate would not agree 
to, nor the Republican President sign, a bill for such repeal. 

We have the power to vote money ; let us annex conditions to it and insist 
upon the redress of grievances. 

This states their position in the strongest light. He admits the 
repeal can not be accomplished except upon an appropriation bill ; 
that the Republican President would not sign it; and because he will 
not, the proposition is to starve the Government until he does sign it. 
Hon. Jere N. Williams, of Alabama, and Hon. J. D. C. Atkins, of 
Tennessee, Representatives from the South, speak to the same effect. 



FREE AND FAIR ELECTIONS. 45 

Mr. "Williams says : 

An appropriation bill is a necessary medium at this time, because we can 
secure a repeal in no other way. Let the work go on, and let those who heed the 
Constitution and truly represent their States and people stand with unalterable 
purpose in the position that we have here taken. 

Mr. Atkins says : 

The right of the Representatives of the people to withhold supplies is as old 
as English liberty. History records numerous instances where the Commons, 
feeling that the people were oppressed by laws that the Lords would not consent 
to repeal by the ordinary methods of legislation, obtained redress at last by re- 
fusing appropriations unless accompanied by relief measures. 

I might multiply these utterances, North and South, all showing 
a settled purpose upon the part of the Democratic majority to have 
their own way in matters of legislation or they will paralyze the Gov- 
ernment. We might well imagine we were back amid the stormy 
days of 18G0 and '61, when this same party announced the same doc- 
trine, evinced the same spirit, and pronounced in only another form 
the same threat. Eestored, but not reconstructed, they are as intent 
upon controlling the Government absolutely, in defiance of the Con- 
stitution, and in their own way, as they were in the old days of slavery. 
They controlled the Executive then ; thank God, they can not do it 
now ! [Applause on the Republican side.] This mode of legislation 
was severely condemned by the early statesmen of both political par- 
ties, and when I have brought to your attention their recorded senti- 
ments on this subject you will fully justify me in my characterization 
of this proceeding. In 1855 an attempt was made to place upon the 
Civil and Diplomatic Bill certain tariff legislation, which was resisted 
by distinguished Senators representing both parties. 

I first quote from Mr. Clayton, and read from the Congressional 
Globe (in the Senate), second session. Thirty-third Congress, page 
1035. Mr. Clayton said : 

Now, sir, what must be the consequences hereafter of sustaining such a prop- 
osition as the House have put into this bill ? Whenever a majority in one branch 
of Congress shall desire any great object, which they can not attain by a separate 
bill, they will move to put it on the Civil and Diplomatic Appropriation Bill, and 
thus compel the other branch of Congress to accept the whole or none. ... It 
is a most dangerous precedent ; it is an example that has never been set to us 
before, and I hope will never be attempted again. 

Mr. Bayard said : 

Mr. President, I can hardly express in language the objections which I enter- 
tain to the condition of things at which we are now arriving, resulting from the 
abandonment of all rules necessary for the preservation of order and the rights of 



46 SPEECHES AND ADDRESSES OF WILLIAM McKINLEY. 

the minority in reference to the legislation of the country. ... I am not will- 
ing, by my vote, to sanction the adoption of a general system of legislation on the 
appropriation bills for any and every purpose that a majority may see fit to place 
on them.— Congressional Globe, second session, Thirty-third Congress, page 1044. 

Mr. Seward said : 

Mr. President, I regard the proposition to incorporate a new tariff system into 
the Civil and Diplomatic Appropriation Bill as one of a revolutionary character. 
... Let me state the question. The House of Representatives virtually says, 
that if the Senate will agree that certain modifications of the tariff in regard to 
wool shall be made, etc., then the President and other executive officers of the 
Government, civil, judicial, and diplomatic, may receive their salaries secured to 
them by the Constitution and laws. But if the Senate will not consent to these 
modifications, then no officer of the Government, however high, no servant of the 
people, however low, shall receive any compensation.— Congressional Globe, second 
session. Thirty-third Congress, page 1048. 

Mr. Douglas said : 

I should be against this measure at the first blush, on the ground that it is not 
a revenue tariff ; that it is not a free-trade measure ; that it is a return to what I 
had hoped was the exploded doctrine of protection. In the next place, even if the 
bill were right in itself, if its provisions were correct, I could not consent by my 
vote to put it on this appropriation bill, for the reason that such a course is revo- 
lutionary in its character. . . . Sir, if you begin to break through those safe- 
guards which experience and wisdom in all free governments and legislative 
bodies have erected, you will have opened the gates to the floods which will flow 
in and overwhelm your appropriation bill. ... I say, therefore, that 1 can not 
give my sanction to a course of proceedings so dangerous, so revolutionary in its 
character as this, even if I were satisfied with the character of the tariff provision 
which is proposed to be retained in the bill. — Congressional Globe, second session, 
Thirty-third Congress, page 1060. 

Again, in 1856, the House sought to put upon the Army Appro- 
priation Bill the following proviso : 

Provided, nevertheless, That no part of the military force of the United States 
herein provided for shall be employed in aid of the enforcement of the enactments 
of the alleged Legislative Assembly of the Territory of Kansas, recently assem- 
bled at Shawnee Mission, until Congress shall have enacted either that it was or 
was not a valid Legislative Assembly, chosen in conformity with the organic law 
by the people of the said Territory : And provided, That, until Congress shall have 
passed upon the validity of the said Legislative Assembly of Kansas, it shall bo 
the duty of the President to use the military force in said Territory to preserve 
the peace, suppress insurrection, repel invasion, and protect persons and property 
therein and upon the National highways in the State of Missouri or elsewhere 
from unlawful seizures and searches. And be it further provided, That the Presi- 
dent is required to disarm the present disorganized militia of the Territory of 
Kansas, to recall all the United States arms therein distributed, and to prevent 
armed men from going into the said Territory to disturb the public peace or to aid 



FREE AND FAIR ELECTIONS. 47 

in the enforcement or resistance of real or pretended law. — Congressional Globe 
first session, Tliirty-fourth Congress, page 1969. 

This in the Senate led to resistance ; and I quote from the dis- 
cussion then had. Mr. Cass said : 

1 am utterly opposed to this mode of coercion by which provisions are to be 
inserted in appropriation bills. . . . The effect of such a system must be that, 
instead of having a Government with two branches in the Legislature— a Govern- 
ment composed of popular numbers and of State sovereignties, each a check on 
the other — you would have a Government of but one branch ; and it would, in 
fact, degenerate into a French Convention. . . . You may not call it revolution- 
ary, but it will lead to revolution.— Congressional Globe, first session. Thirty- 
fourth Congress, page 2329. 

Mr. Douglas said : 

One word upon the principle involved. I hold that the proviso of the House 
is not only palpably unconstitutional, but directly revolutionary.— Congressional 
Globe, first session, Thirty-fourth Congress, page 2230. 

Mr. Mason said : 

This House of Representatives, of which I speak with all respect, has tried 
on more than one bill, and now, after three conferences, insists to the latest hour 
on making the appropriation bills the vehicle of revolutionary measures. For 
one, I am prepared to try it before the American people.— Congressional Globe, 
first session, Thirty-fourth Congress, page 2230. 

Mr. Cass further said : 

The tendency of this principle is to concentrate all power in the House of 
Representatives; to allow it to annex any provision it pleases, without reference 
to the subject of appropriation. Appropriation bills are intended to be bills 
to carry into effect pre-existing laws ; but this would be the establishment of a 
great fundamental unconstitutional principle, irreconcilable with the nature of 
our Government.— Congressional Globe, first session. Thirty-fourth Congress, 
page 2281. 

This attempt involves the overthrow of the Constitution. This is 
the lesson taught by the early statesmen whose warnings I have just 
cited. It would destroy the veto power of the President, one of the 
safeguards against bad legislation, one of the checks provided by the 
organic law. 

It in effect says you dare not exercise your veto prerogative even 
though you do not approve of our legislation ; if you do, the wheels 
of the Government must stop. It overrides one of the constitutional 
guarantees ; it attempts to take away freedom of action upon the part 
of the Executive ; it is the first step in the pathway of revolution. 
What are the powers of the several departments of the Government 



4,8 SPEECHES AND ADDRESSES OP WILLIAM McKINLEY. 

in respect to legislation ? I read from section 7, Article I, of the 
Constitution : 

Every bill which shall have passed the House of Representatives and the 
Senate, shall, before it become a law, be presented to the President of the United 
States ; if he approve, he shall sign it ; but if not, he shall return it, with his objec- 
tions, to that House in which it shall have originated, who shall enter the objec- 
tions at large on their journal, and proceed to reconsider it. If after such recon- 
sideration two thirds of that House shall agree to pass the bill, it shall be sent, 
together with the objections, to the other House, by which it shall likewise be 
reconsidered, and if approved by two thirds of that House it shall become a law. 

And the same is true of every order, resolution, or vote to which 
the concurrence of the Senate and House of Representatives may be 
necessary except on a question of adjournment. In the face of this 
provision my colleague [Mr. Hurd] says "he [the President] has 
nothing to do with the legislation of this country." By this provision 
the President becomes a part of the law-making power ; two thirds of 
both Houses alone can override his judgment of any measure which 
may be proposed. This proceeding ignores the fundamental law and 
sets at naught the veto power except at the cost of closing up the 
great departments of the Government. 

What does this mean ? Is it too violent a presumption, is it too 
' strong a statement to say that the leaders who for four years sought 
', to destroy free government by arms are now seeking by the more 
' peaceful but less manly methods of coercion and intimidation to con- 
. trol the Government which they could not destroy? If the Constitu- 
tion is to be ignored, if free and honest elections can not be had 
everywhere throughout the country, free government is as effectively 
overthrown as though it had been done by the sword. The President 
must surrender this power vested in him by the Constitution, which 
he solemnly swore to observe and obey, or the whole machinery of the 
Government must cease to exercise its functions. The scope and 
necessity of this power are discussed in The Federalist, from which I 
extract the following, published March 31, 1788 : 

It [the veto power] establishes a salutary check upon the legislative body cal- 
culated to guard the community against the effects of faction, of precipitancy, or 
of any impulse unfriendly to the public good, which may happen to influence a 
majority of that body. 

The primary inducement to conferring the power in question upon the Execu- 
tive is to enable him to defend himself ; the secondary one is to increase the 
chances in favor of the community against the passing of bad laws through haste, 
inadvertence, or design. 

The injury which may possibly be done by defeating a few good laws will be 
amply compensated by the advantage of preventing a number of bad ones. 



FREE AND FAIR ELECTIONS. 49 

It is evident that there would be greater danger of his not using his power 
when necessary than of his using it too often or too much. 

In the case for which it is chiefly designed — that of an immediate attack upon 
the constitutional rights of the Executive, or in a case in ivhich the public good 
was ev^idently and palpably sacrificed— & man of tolerable firmness would avail 
himself of his constitutional means of defense, and would listen to the admoni- 
tions of duty and responsibility. 

It is to be hoped that it will not often happen that improper views will gov- 
ern so large a proportion as two thirds of both branches of the Legislature at the 
same time, and this, too, in spite of the counterpoising weight of the Executive. 

The veto power was wisely provided by the framers of the 
Constitution, and until now was never sought to be abrogated. It 
has more than once been eulogized by the Democratic party of the 
United States. In 1856 this party, in National Convention at Cin- 
cinnati, commended this power as one of the great constitutional safe- 
guards. Let me read its declaration : 

9. That we are decidedly opposed to taking from the President the qualified 
veto power, by which he is enabled, under restrictions and responsibilities amply 
suflicient to guard the public interest, to suspend the passage of a bill whose 
merits can not secure the approval of two thirds of the Senate and House of Rep- 
resentatives until the judgment of the people can be obtained thereon, and which 
has saved the American people from the corrupt and tyrannical domination of the 
Bank of the United States and from a corrupting system of general internal im- 
provements. 

This plank was reaffirmed in the Democratic Conventions of 1860, 
held in Charleston and Baltimore. 

It was a wise power then " to guard the public interest and sus- 
pend the passage of a bill whose merits can not secure the approval 
of two thirds of the Senate and House of Eepresentatives until the 
judgment of the people can be obtained " ; but now, in the language 
of my colleague [Mr. Hurd], who announces the new doctrine of the 
Democratic party, the right of the President to participate in legis- 
lation is denied—" he has nothing to do with the legislation of this 
country." This proceeding is a violation of what was once a fun- 
damental principle of the Democratic faith. Everybody knows the 
merits of this amendment can not secure the approval of two thirds 
of either House, much less of both Houses. That is well understood, 
and nothing is left in such an event, using the language of the plat- 
form, but to wait and obtain the judgment of the people, and to this 
tribunal we invite the Democratic party in this House to go. 

The gentleman from Mississippi [Mr. Chalmers], in his speech 
in this House on April 1st, declares that these questions have 



50 SPEECHES AND ADDRESSES OP WILLIAM McKINLEY. 

already been tried before the people. When and where ? I ask. In 
what State or National platform was the repeal of the election laws 
demanded? In what political contest were they discussed? The 
issue is a new one, never tried before the people, and now for the first 
time pressed upon Congress by the Democratic leaders as a necessity 
to their political campaign in 1880. In the next Presidential contest 
there must be no safeguards to an honest ballot, no peace at the polls. 
Fraud and force, the great weapons of Democratic ascendency, must 
be unrestricted. The repeal of these laws is a Democratic necessity 
to the next Presidential election. 

We are willing to try before the people the question of the consti- 
tutional powers of the President, and whether the election laws, passed 
in the interest of a free and honest ballot, shall be maintained or re- 
pealed. The great body of voters in this country want the Constitu- 
tion preserved in full force, and want and will have, sooner or later, 
fair play at the elections both North and South. Repeating, ballot- 
box stuffing, the use of tissue ballots, fraud at the polls, intimidation, 
and restraint of a free ballot in whatever form, must cease. The 
public sense abhors them all, and the party which practices such 
methods or quietly suffers them to be put in operation will be swept 
from power by the irresistible force of an honest and enlightened 
public sentiment. [Applause.] Who is demanding this amendment, 
and in whose interest? Not in the interest of free elections — the 
honest citizen is not demanding it ; on the contrary, the general wish 
is for such legislation as will the more certainly and securely make 
the right of suffrage free and untrammeled. 

Mr. Chairman, on December 2, 1878, the President of the United 
States, in his annual message of that date, called the attention of 
Congress to this subject and its great importance, using the following 
language : 

The three Constitutional Amendments, which conferred freedom and equality 
of civil and political rights upon the colored people of the South, were adopted 
by the concurrent action of the great body of good citizens who maintained the 
authority of the National Government and the integrity and perpetuity of the 
Union at such a cost of treasure and life, as a wise and necessary embodiment in 
the organic law of the just results of the war. The people of the former slave- 
holding States accepted these results, and gave, in every practicable form, assur- 
ances that the Thirteenth, Fourteenth, and Fifteenth Amendments, and laws 
passed in pursuance thereof, should in good faith be enforced rigidly and impar- 
tially, in letter and spirit, to the end that the humblest citizen, without distinc- 
tion of race or color, should under them receive full and equal protection in 
person and property and in political rights and privileges. By these Constitu- 



FREE AND FAIR ELECTIONS, 51 

tional Amendments the Southern section of the Union obtained a large increase 
of political power in Congress and in the electoral college, and the country justly 
expected that elections would proceed, as to the enfranchised race, upon the same 
circumstances of legal and constitutional freedom and protection which obtained 
in aU the other States of the Union. The friends of law and order looked for- 
ward to the conduct of these elections as offering to the general judgment of the 
country an important opportunity to measure the degree in which the right of 
suffrage could be exercised by the colored people, and would be respected by their 
fellow-citizens ; but a more general enjoyment of freedom of suffrage by the col- 
ored people, and a more just and generous protection of that freedom by the com- 
munities of which they form a part, were generally anticipated than the record of 
the elections discloses. In some of those States in which the colored people have 
been unable to make their opinions felt in the elections the result is mainly due 
to influences not easily measured or remedied by legal protection ; but in the 
States of Louisiana and South Carolina at large, and in some particular Congres- 
sional districts outside of those States, the records of the elections seem to com- 
pel the conclusion that the rights of the colored voters have been overridden and 
their participation in the elections not permitted to be either general or free. 

I respectfully urge upon your attention that the Congressional elections in 
every district, in a very important sense, are justly a matter of political interest 
and concern throughout the whole country. Each State, every political party, is 
entitled to the share of power which is conferred by the legal and constitutional 
suffrage. It is the right of every citizen possessing the qualifications prescribed 
by law to cast one unintimidated ballot and to have his ballot honestly counted. 
So long as the exercise of this power and the enjoyment of this right are common 
and equal, practically as well as formally, submission to the results of the suffrage 
will be accorded loyally and cheerfully, and all the departments of the Government 
will feel the true vigor of the popular will thus expressed. No temporary or 
administrative inte^ ^ts of the Government, however urgent or weighty, will ever 
displace the zeal o/ our people in defense of the primary rights of citizenship. 
They understand ' lat the protection of liberty requires the maintenance in full 
vigor of the ma- j.y methods of free speech, free press, and free suffrage, and will 
sustain the full .uthority of the Government to enforce the laws which are framed 
to preserve thf .e inestimable rights. 

This i ivitation by the Chief Executive to Congress to devise 
some me'.ns for a fair and honest election, for greater security in the 
right of suffrage, " that every citizen possessing the qualifications 
prescribed by law can cast one unintimidated ballot, and to have his 
ballot honestly counted," is met with no favorable response or action. 
No additional safeguards to the ballot-box are proposed. No in- 
creased security to the voter is extended to him, but in the face of 
this recommendation, and in the presence of facts upon which it is 
based, a Democratic Congress deliberately proposes to remove all ex- 
isting safeguards to a free and honest ballot. 

The recommendation of the President is wholly disregarded ; the 



52 SPEECHES AND ADDRESSES OP WILLIAM McKlNLEY. 

fraud, force, and violence which marked some of the Congressional 
elections in 1878, to which our attention has been called in this sol- 
emn manner, are utterly disregarded. Instead of new or additional 
legislation in the interest of a fair election, old legislation looking 
to that end is to be swept from the statute-books. The force and 
\^ intimidation hitherto employed at polling places for carrying the 
1 elections are to continue without any restraint, and the same meth- 
• ods are to be used upon the President to coerce him to approve an 
amendment which will make fraud upon the elective franchise more 
easy of accomplishment and bulldozing beyond the power of correc- 
tion. 

This party in Congress, so thirsting for power, is unwilling to 
await the will of the people. They seek in advance of that will to 
usurp all governmental powers. They are endeavoring to absorb all 
the constitutional functions of the President by threat and coercion. 
They can not await, in their eagerness, for the voice of the people to 
call them to further power. I assure them that no other course will 
succeed. Let me suggest, in all kindness but with great plainness of 
speech, to the gentlemen on the other side, who so recently were en- 
gaged in the work of trying to break up this Government, that they 
are getting along fast enough ; they already have too much power ; 
and this is made more and still more apparent day by day as we wit- 
ness the use of the power now reposed in their hands. 
; They have already entered upon their unholy work of striking 

the last vestige of our war measures from the statute-books ; they are 
engaged in it now. Only the other day, and while the Army Bill was 
being considered, the gentleman from Virginia [Mr. Tucker], one of 
the able and distinguished men of this House, proposed an amend- 
ment repealing section 1218 of the United States Statutes. What is 
the section, the repeal of which he demands ? Let me read it : 

• No persons who have served in any capacity in the military, naval, or civil 

{ service of the so-called Confederate States, or of either of the States, in insurrec- 
[ tion during the late rebellion, shall be appointed to any position in the Army of 
the United States. 

The Army list is to be opened and revised, so that men who served 
in the Confederate Army, who for four years fought to destroy this 
Government, shall be placed upon that list as commissioned officers. 
Aye, more, the men who were in our Army before the war as com- 
missioned officers, who were educated at the public expense, who took 
an oath to support the Constitution of the United States, and when 
the Nation was threatened with danger resigned their commissions 



FREE AND FAIR ELECTIONS. 53 

and forsook the flag, are to be eligible for reappointment to that , 
Army again. Are we quite ready for this ? | 

This is not all. On February 13, 1878, the Chairman of the 
Committee on Invalid Pensions of the Forty-fifth Congress [Mr. 
Eice] reported to the House, with the sanction of a majority of that 
Committee, a bill repealing section 4716 of the United States Stat- 
utes. Let me read the section to be repealed : 

No money on account of pension shall be paid to any person, or to the widow, 
children, or heirs, of any deceased person, who in any manner voluntarily engaged 
in, or aided or abetted, the late rebellion against the authority of the United 
States. 

And the same bill contained the following affirmative legislation : 

Sec. 7. That the Secretary of the Interior be, and is hereby, authorized and 
required to restore to the pension roll the names of all invalid pensioners now 
living who were stricken therefrom on account of disloyalty, and pay them pen- 
sions from the 25th day of December, 1868, at the rate which they would have 
been entitled to had they not been dropped from the pension roll. 

These are some of the war measures which are to be " wiped out " 
from the statute-book. These are some of the degrading badges 
which are to be torn off. 

These are only a foretaste of the war measures which are to be 
wiped out and of the peace measures which are to be enacted. I am 
not surprised that, speaking in the same spirit, the Southern States, 
a newspaper published in Okolona, Mississippi, should say : 

Let the Federal brigadiers take back seats in the work of restoration. The 
Republic has no further use for the Lincoln hirelings. 

By the way, Yankees, don't it make you feel queer to think that we've defeated 
you fellows after all, and captured the Capital ? 

Have they " after all " captured this country ? Have they " come 
back to rule"? 

The first fruits of their dominion are not assuring to the country, 
and will not, I am certain, incline the people to clothe them with 
still greater power. Threatened revolution will not hasten it ; extra 
sessions, useless and expensive, will not accelerate it. Threat and 
menace, disturbing the business interests of the country, will only 
retard it. It will come when your party have shown that you deserve 
it. When you have demonstrated that the financial, industrial, and 
business interests of the Nation are safer and wiser in your hands than 
in any other, and, more than all, when you have demonstrated that 
free government will not perish in your keeping, it will come then, 



*/ 



54 SPEECHES AND ADDRESSES OF WILLIAM McKINLEY. 

and not before. I hope, Mr. Chairman, this amendment will not be 
insisted upon. It is wrong in itself ; it endangers free government. 
I believe the method proposed under the circumstances I have already 
designated is revolutionary. There is no necessity for such haste. 
The law can have no force and effect until 1880, except in the State 
of California. If the amendment must be passed, let it come in the 
ordinary course of legislation. There will be ample time at the regu- 
lar session next winter, and before any other Federal elections will be 
held. 

The country is not asking for it. Business will suffer and is suf- 
fering every day from the agitation of a continued extra session of 
Congress. Uncertainty in legislation is a terror to all business and 
commercial interests, and this uncertainty exists and will continue so 
long as we remain in session. Let us remove it. Let us pass the 
appropriation bills, simple and pure. Let us keep the Executive 
Department in motion. Let the courts of the United States go on 
and clear up their already overcrowded dockets. Let the representa- 
tives of the Government abroad, upon whom our commercial rela- 
tions with other nations so largely depend, be not crippled. Give the 
pensioners of the Government their well-earned and much-needed 
pensions. Let the Army be clothed, provisioned, and paid. Do this, 
striking out all political amendments from the appropriation bills, ad- 
journ speedily, and give the country that peace and rest which will 
be promotive of the public good. When we have done this we have 
evidenced the wisdom of statesmen and the work of patriots. [Great 
applause on the Republican side.] Let the people, then, the final 
arbiter, the source of all power, decide the issue between us. 



CEIMES AGAINST THE BALLOT. 

Speech as Temporary Chairman of the Kepublican State 
Convention at Columbus, Ohio, April 28, 1880. 

Gentlemen of the Convention : I make my grateful ac- 
knowledgments to the State Committee and this convention for the 
honor of presiding temporarily over the deliberations of so large a 
body of representative Republicans, coming from every section of the 
State. 

The duties with which you are charged are important and re- 
sponsible, having relation not only to the local contest in our own 
State, but reaching out and beyond into National politics, and influ- 
encing, in some measure at least, the great National contest which is 
so near at hand. 

In view of the peculiar condition of public affairs in this country, 
seldom have Eepublicans met in State convention at a more critical 
juncture than now, and rarely have they had a more important and 
delicate duty to perform. As the work here may promote or retard 
Republican success in the next Presidential race, our actions will be 
watched by Republicans everywhere with deep concern. 

We are to nominate a State ticket, announce the principles and 
purposes of our party in a platform of resolutions, and, what is of 
more importance, we are to choose four delegates to voice our sen- 
timents in the great National Convention to be held in Chicago in 
June next. 

The whole work of the convention should be well and wisely 
done. The most capable men of our party in the State, true and 
tried Republicans, who will subordinate personal preferences and 
prejudices to party and public good, should be appointed as delegates. 

Happily for our State, we have no cliques or factions to control 
our deliberations or stifle the voice of the people, and in the work 
before us all can be assured that whatever is done will be in obedi- 
ence to the will of the people, who stand behind you, their repre- 
sentatives, in this convention. 



56 SPEECHES AND ADDRESSES OF WILLIAM McKINLEY. 

This is no place for inharmony or dissensions, no forum for 
bickerings or domestic discord ; the highest and greatest good for 
the party and the country should guide the judgment of every indi- 
vidual delegate and Eepublican and determine our concerted action. 
We have in the Democratic party an enemy strong and powerful 
enough, in the State and Nation, to demand of every Republican to 
stand shoulder to shoulder to secure Republican ascendency. The 
Democracy mean to win the next Presidency, by lawful means if 
they can, but failing by such means, they intend, I fear, to capture it, 
, careless of methods, and indifferent to the instrumentalities employed. 

They are determined upon attaining power ; if by the will of the 
people, well and good ; if not, then in opposition to their will and in 
defiance thereof, if that can be accomplished. If you have any doubt 
of their purpose, permit me to remind you that in 1876, in the Presi- 
dential contest of that year, when beaten fairly and honestly by a con- 
stitutional majority, unwilling to acquiesce in the result, they sought 
to secure electors by unworthy means in the States of Florida, Loui- 
siana, and Oregon, sufficient in number to reverse the result and 
defeat the will of the people as constitutionally expressed. 

In 1879 they attempted to usurp authority, and almost succeeded 
in wresting the State of Maine from the hands of the constitutional 
and legal government. With the popular will clearly and unmis- 
takably against them, as expressed at the polls, with a Republican 
Legislature elected by an overwhelming majority, with no pretext of 
fraud or force or undue influence contributing to the result, they 
sought to stamp out and annul the will of the people by a system 
of fraudulent practices hitherto unknown in any Northern State. 
They wanted the State, the people had adjudged it against them, and 
larceny to their consciences was no crime to possess it. This, it 
' Tsdll^be noted, was not in the South, but in New England, amid the 
best '^ of American civilization ; and though it was unsuccessful, 
thanks to the clear heads and courageous hearts of the Republicans 
of that heroic State, yet it teaches a practical lesson of the future 
methods to be employed. 

Again, this year Minnesota, a Republican State, for years reliable 
as part of the Republican column, must fall prey to Democratic 
greed. An additional State will be necessary to the election of a 
Democratic President, if the election should go to the House of 
Representatives, where every indication points it will go, in the 
event the popular elections are against the Democratic party. 
Washburn's seat must be vacated to give them that State ; he who 



CRIMES AGAINST THE BALLOT. 57 

was elected in 1878 by a majority of 3,013, in a district which never 
gave a Democratic majority since its creation, and which only last 
year, in the State elections, declared for the Eepublican party by a 
majority of nearly 6,000. He must be dispossessed of his seat, be- 
cause necessity, Democratic necessity, which recognizes no law of 
right, demands it. 

Again, in Florida, Mr. Bisbee, a Republican, was elected by an 
undoubted majority, was fraudulently counted out by a Democratic 
returning board ; a new canvass was ordered by the Supreme Court, 
which also gave the election to Bisbee. The Governor, charged with 
the duty of certifying the result of the election, requested the advice 
of the Attorney-General, a Democrat, as to whom he should issue the 
certificate of election, and although the Attorney- General gave an 
opinion to the Governor that Bisbee was entitled to the certificate, 
it was issued to another, who was never elected, but who is now 
occupying a seat in the House of Representatives, while three of the 
criminals, whose frauds, it is alleged, secured him his seat, are serv- 
ing in the penitentiary, convicted and sentenced on account of those 
very frauds. 

I might multiply examples evidencing the purpose of the Demo- 
cratic leaders to control this Government at any sacrifice of prin- 
ciple or right, but these are sufficient to convince the most doubting 
of what awaits this country at the hands of that party in an emer- 
gency such as I have described. They have succeeded in silencing 
the Republican voice of the South, and the Republican Representa- 
tive in Congress from that section will soon be only a reminiscence. 

Whole districts have been disfranchised by the use of the shotgun 
and the bludgeon, and Republicanism has been hushed into the still- 
ness of death. A few facts in this connection will not be Avithout 
profit : 

Take Georgia, and contrast the election of 1872 with that of 1878. 
In the Second District the Democratic vote in 1872 was 9,530 ; in 
the same year the Republican vote was 9,616. In 1878 the Demo- 
cratic vote was 2,626, and the Republican vote was only six— a falling 
off of 9,620 Republican votes in a period of six years ; and it will be 
observed that this result is not due to a change of political sentiment, 
for the Democratic vote discloses no increase. In the Sixth District, 
in 1872, the Democratic vote was 9,993, and the Republican vote 
6,196; in 1878 the Democratic vote was 3,192, and the Republi- 
can vote only eighteen. In the Eighth District, in 1872, the 
Democratic vote was 7,437, and the Republican vote 6,230 ; in 1878 



58 SPEECHES AND ADDRESSES OP WILLIAM McKINLEY. 

the Democratic vote was 3,673, and the Republican vote had fallen to 
FIFTY-FOUR. Seventy-eight Republican votes were cast in three Con- 
gressional districts in this State in 1878, against 22,042 cast in 1872. 

Go into Mississippi, where it is said peace reigns and protection is 
awarded to the humblest citizen, and we find that the Republican 
vote in the Third District fell from 15,047 in 1872 to 656 in 1878 ; 
and in the Sixth District from 15,101 in 1872 to 1,307 in 1878. In 
1872 four districts in Mississippi gave over 60,000 Republican votes, 
and in 1878 these same districts gave less than 3,000. Fifty-seven 
thousand Republican votes have disappeared in six years, and that 
number of citizens have been shut out from participation in political 
control, absolutely deprived of the constitutional right of franchise. 

In North Carolina, in the Sixth District, the Republican vote in 
1872 was 10,561 ; in 1876, 10,282 ; and in 1878 but 258. These are 
some of the lessons of self-government in the South ; a few examples 
only, gathered here and there, illustrating how the constitutional 
guarantees of equality in civil and political privileges are maintained 
in States where the Democratic party has exclusive control. Nobody 
has the temerity to assert that there has been any decrease or dimi- 
nution of the Republican population to account for this change. No 
depopulation, no plague or pestilence has swept them from the face 
of the country ; but oppressed, bullied, and terrorized, they stand 
mute and dumb in the exercise of citizenship, poUfically paj'ali/zed ; 
and Congress not only refuses to provide a remedy, but is seeking to 
break down existing guarantees. 

Is this system of disfranchisement to be further permitted ? Is 
the Republican sentiment thus to be hushed in the South, and how 
long ? Are the men who increase the representative power through- 
out these States to have no representation ? Are free thought and free 

i political action to be crushed out in one section of our country ? I 
answer No, xo ! but that the whole power of the Federal Government 

' must be exhausted in securing to every citizen, black or white, rich 
or poor, everyAvhere within the limits of the Union, every right, civil 
and political, guaranteed by the Constitution and the laws. Nothing 
short of this will satisfy public conscience, public morals, and public 
justice. 

Within the past twelve months Democratic leaders in Congress 
have avowed a purpose not to stop until they have torn every rem- 
nant of our war measures from the statute-books. They are now en- 
gaged, as at the extra session, in an effort to efface from our laws, or, 
failing in this, to nullify those wise provisions, essential to the pres- 



CRIMES AGAINST THE BALLOT. 59 

ervation of the Nation, intended for the protection of all alike and 
equally in the enjoyment of their civil and political rights ; essential 
to the purity and integrity of the ballot, and to have that ballot 
honestly counted ; guarantees which the Eepublican party must never 
surrender — never, while the Government lasts ! 

At this very session of Congress a distinguished member of that 
body from our own State, in discussing the election laws, and advo- 
cating a compromise amendment, said : 

But we find these laws upon the statute-book. We are not able to repeal. 
Let us cheapen their enforcement. These laws, having been declared to be con- 
stitutional by the Supreme Court of the United States, must be so treated pro 
tempore. 

Mark the language ! " Pro tempore " ! or, until such time as the 
Democratic party can reorganize the Supreme Court of the United 
States (for that is the clear declaration), and appoint to that high 
and honorable tribunal men who will be unfriendly to the execution 
of these laws, and pronounce them unconstitutional; or until they 
can get a President who will consent that these great guarantees of 
an honest ballot shall be torn from the statute-book. 

Pro tempore ! Prophetic and significant words. Equally appli- 
cable to every law which protects the voter, which maintains the Gov- 
ernment, which prevents the basest frauds upon the ballot, which is 
distasteful to treason, or which stands in the way of Democratic 
ascendency in this country. Power will wipe out the pro tempore 
existence of these laws, as it will every law which stands in the way 
of fraud and tissue ballots. 

If the power had been in their hands at the extra session, every 
election law upon our statute-books would have been repealed ; or, if 
they had the power now, a like result would follow. Their bold 
course at the extra session attracted public notice, disclosing, as it 
did, the real purpose of this revolutionary party. Their quiet at this 
session deceives nobody. The order has gone forth that they must 
not speak, and silence reigns on the Democratic side of the House. 
Their policy of frankness at the last session was a political failure, 
and they now hope their present policy of silence will be more suc- 
cessful. It is a thin guise, and will deceive no one. It is the quiet of 
expediency, and, adopting the language of General Ewing, it is "^?ro 
tempore.'''' The Presidential election over, and their chronic condition 
of revolution will develop at once. 

It is the duty of the Republican party, therefore, to seek success 
5 



60 SPEECHES AND ADDRESSES OF WILLIAM McKINLEY. 

in tliis contest by every honorable means, and the employment of ex- 
traordinary individual and collective effort to that end. I congratu- 
late the Republican party that the administration of President Hayes, 
by its spotless and consistent record ; its purity of personal and offi- 
cial conduct ; its masterly achievements of the resumption of specie 
payments and the refunding of the public debt; its courageous 
course in resisting the encroachments of Congress at the extra session, 
and maintaining the Constitution and the laws, heedless of threats to 
starve the Government, has placed the party on the vantage ground 

of victory. 

\ "We find ourselves stronger and more harmonious than in the can- 
vass of 1876. The party has no dissensions now, as then, while con- 
servative men everywhere, independent in politics, will act with us, 
believing that the business and material interests of the country are 
more secure with the Republican party than with any other. 
- We recall with pride the work of the Republican party, which 
preserved the Nation against a dreadful war waged for its overthrow ; 
which proclaimed liberty and equality everywhere throughout the 
Union ; which has brought safety and security to our business enter- 
prises and investments, has sent confidence and courage into the ave- 
nues of trade, and given tone and vigor to every department of 
industry ; a work which has established a sound and stable currency, 
convertible into coin at the will of the holder, unvarying in value and 
i everywhere equal ; which has secured credit at home and abroad, and 
I placed us in the front rank of honest commercial nations ; which has 
/ enabled us to reduce the public debt more than seven hundred and 
seventy-six millions since the close of the Rebellion, and the amount 
j of our interest charge over sixty-nine millions of dollars. AVith these 
achievements, nothing is required to continue this historic party in 
L^ower but wise action here and at the National Convention. 

Among the distinguished names now mentioned in connection 
with the Republican nomination for the Presidency, we find an emi- 
nent citizen of our own State, who in the past we have delighted to 
honor, and whose long and useful public career has made his name 
and fame Nation-wide. Four times elected to the National House 
of Representatives by his home district, three times chosen to the 
Senate of the United States, the Chairman of the Finance Committee 
of that honorable body, closely identified with all the great public 
measures in the past twenty-five years, and himself the author of much 
of the wisest legislation of the country within that period ; elevated 
in 1876 to the important position of Secretary of the Treasury, 



CRIMES AGAINST THE BALLOT. 61 

his administration of the finances of the Nation has been char- 
acterized by the highest skill, and his matchless achievements in 
that Department have commanded the admiration and wonder of the 
financial world ; to him the Nation owes a debt of gratitnde which his 
elevation to the Presidency would fitly recognize, and Ohio would 
honor herself in honoring John Sherman with a hearty and cordial 
support at the Chicago Convention. 

But if the choice of the Convention shall fall upon the great soldier 
of the Republic, the leader of our armies, the " silent man of the cen- 
tury," General Ulysses S. Grant ; or upon that pre-eminent citizen of 
New England, for years the great leader of the popular branch of 
Congress, now the peer of the foremost Senator in that body of master 
statesmen, who has always and everywhere boldly defended Repub- 
licanism against the assaults of the Democracy, the peerless debater, 
the fearless statesman, James G. Blaine — let us unite in pledging 
Ohio's twenty-two electoral votes to the nominee of that Convention, 
whoever he may be. 

Nearly twenty years ago the Republican party attained National 
power in this country, and for the most part has held it without in- 
terruption since. Its history records the most stirring events in the 
Nation's life, and there is nothing in its long and eventful career of 
which any patriot need be ashamed, or which any loyal American 
citizen would efface. Shall the old party be mustered out of power 
now? Has it done its work ? Thus far it has, and well. 

It came into power first to drive oppression out and save liberty: 
from a cruel death. Its work is not yet done. Liberty was but half 
of the great undertaking ; after that, security to our institutions — 
civil and political equality — must be established firmly and forever. 
Its mission is, therefore, not ended, and can never end until every 
freeman is an independent citizen, with every privilege of citizenship 
guaranteed by the Constitution, and until there shall not be within 
the boundaries of any section of this great country one foot of ground 
over which our flag floats and upon which a citizen stands who may 
not speak and think and vote as he pleases. 

Appreciating, therefore, the overshadowing importance of the 
issues involved ; impressed with the absolute necessity of another 
Republican triumph ; and measuring all the difficulties in our path- 
way, let us summon the requisite energy and make another grand 
effort to place in power in this Republic the men and the party by 
whose fidelity and patriotism its life was preserved. Let this contest 
end in the supremacy of law and loyalty. 



THE CONTEST AGAINST JUDGE TAYLOR. 

Speech in the House of Kepeesentatives, Forty-sixth 
Congress, December 13, 1880. 

[From the Congressional Eecord.] 

The House having under consideration the right of Judge Ezra B. Taylor 
to a seat in the House of Representatives, recently vacated by James A. Garfield 
to accept the Presidency, Mr. McKinley said— 

Mr. Speaker : I submit that the objection raised by my colleague 
[Mr. Hurd], certainly ought not to operate to prevent the swearing 
in of the member-elect on his prima facie case. If there be any 
force in the objection made by my colleague, such objection should 
go to the Committee on Elections, but the member-elect in the 
meantime should not be deprived of his seat on the floor of this 
House. 

And permit me to say that on the face of this certificate, which is 
regular in form, signed by the highest executive authority of the 
State, and accredited by the great seal of the State, there is nothing 
showing any such state of facts as those described by the gentleman 
who makes the objection here. It nowhere appears upon that cer- 
tificate what counties in the State of Ohio elected Mr. Taylor for 
the unexpired term of the Forty-sixth Congress. So far as that cer- 
tificate gives any light, we have just as much right to presume the 
election was held in the new Nineteenth District as that it was held 
in the old Nineteenth District ; and there is nothing declared by the 
certificate which makes inferable even any of the statements which 
have been given to this House by my colleague. Therefore, upon 
this certificate that comes here unquestioned, its integrity unassailed, 
no contestant here claiming the seat to which Mr. Taylor, the mem- 
ber-elect, is entitled, no memorial from any citizens in the district, 
nobody claiming the right to a seat in the place of General Garfield 
except Mr. Taylor, and no objection coming from the constituency 



THE CONTEST AGAINST JUDGE TAYLOR. 63 

from which Judge Taylor bears his certificate, it seems to me well 
established, under such circumstances, that, upon the prima facie 
case presented, Mr. Taylor must be at once sworn in as a member of 
this House. 

Upon this point I read from page 151 of McCrary on the Law of 
Elections, as follows : 

But, of course, a commission given by the Governor, or other competent 
authority, does not oust the jurisdiction of the proper tribunal in a contested 
election case. It is simply evidence of tlie right to hold the office ; gives color to 
the acts of the incumbent, and constitutes him an officer de facto. The election 
being sot aside, or the person holding the commission being held not elected by a 
tribunal of competent jurisdiction, the commission falls to the ground. The per- 
son duly commissioned must exercise the functions of the office until upon an in- 
vestigation upon the merits it is judicially determined otherwise. 

And again, upon page 157, we find the following : 

The principal and almost the only case in which the lower House of Congress 
has ever denied to a person holding regular credentials the right to be sworn and 
to take his seat, pending the contest, is the celebrated New Jersey case (1 Bartlett, 
19). In that case one set of claimants held the regular certificate of election 
signed by the Governor, and another set held the certificate of the Secretary of 
State that they had received a majority of the votes cast in their respective dis- 
tricts. After a long and angry debate the House (being yet unorganized) refused 
to admit either set of claimants to their seats. Subsequently, and after a partial 
investigation, the holders of the Secretary's certificate were admitted to seats 
pending the contest, and at the end of the contest these persons were confirmed 
in their seats. This precedent has never since been followed in a single instance. 
It is so clearly wrong, and as a precedent so exceedingly dangerous, that the 
House has not hesitated to disregard it entirely on every occasion when the ques- 
tion has arisen. 

Now it seems to me that upon the prima facie part of the case 
these authorities ought to be decisive and conclusive ; and whatever 
this House may hereafter conclude to do with this case, whatever the 
Committee on Elections may conclude to do with the case, if it should 
be referred to them, it seems well settled by precedent that Judge 
Taylor is entitled to be sworn in at once, and to take his seat in this 
House pending any investigation. 

But I do not think that the facts in this case, admitting them all 
as stated, and disclosing them fully to this House, can in any way 
prejudice the right of Mr. Taylor to a seat on this floor. On the con- 
trary, I believe that an understanding of those facts will only confirm 
his right to the seat which he claims. I propose briefly to give to the 
House a statement of the facts. 



64 SPEECHES AND ADDRESSES OF WILLIAM McKINLEY. 

After the last census — the one preceding the present — the Legisla- 
ture of Ohio, in 1873, arranged the several counties in that State into 
Congressional districts for representative purposes. That law re- 
mained until 1878, when the Legislature of the State repealed the act 
of 1872 and rearranged the several counties of the State into new 
Congressional districts. That was in February, 1878. 

That law was still in force in October, 1878, and the several dis- 
tricts throughout the State created by that law, and, according to the 
territorial limits, fixed by that law, elected members to the present, 
the Forty-sixth Congress. General Garfield's district was one of the 
number. It was called the Nineteenth District under the act of 1878, 
and it is called the Nineteenth District under the act of 1880. 

Now, under that election and law. General Garfield, with every 
one of his associates from Ohio, took his seat in the Forty-sixth Con- 
gress. They came here with the credentials of the Governor; they 
were sworn in, and, with the exception of General Garfield, have since 
occupied their seats on this floor. 

In May, 1880, the Legislature of Ohio repealed the act of 1878, 
and in terms restored the Congressional districts as they were fixed 
by the act of 1872. In that law of 1880 no provision was made for a 
case like the present one, and nothing was said about any vacancy 
which might occur under existing law. The act of 1878 was repealed 
without condition or qualification, and the districts as constituted by 
the act of 1872 were restored. 

In November of that year, after the passage of the act repealing 
the law of 1878, General Garfield resigned his seat in the Forty-sixth 
Congress. The Governor of the State of Ohio, after receiving such 
resignation, issued his writ of election to the five counties composing 
the Nineteenth Congressional District as created by the law of 1878. 
The writ of election was issued to those five counties. No objection 
was urged against it at the time ; no protest was made to it, and no 
election was attempted to be held anywhere else to fill General Gar- 
field's vacancy. 

The two political parties in the Nineteenth District, as organized 
by the act of 1878, and in pursuance of the writ of the Governor of 
the State, proceeded to hold an election upon November 30, 1880, 
both parties having candidates in the field. The result of that elec- 
tion was to give to Mr. Taylor, the member-elect, whose credentials 
are now before us, a very large majority as a Eepresentative from that 
district for the remnant of the Forty-sixth Congress. 

Mr. Wilson. Both parties took part in the election ? 



THE CONTEST AGAINST JUDGE TAYLOR. 65 

Both parties acquiesced. No question was raised at the time ; both 
parties put their candidates in the field, and both parties voted at 
that election. No question was raised by anybody, and Judge Taylor 
comes here with unquestioned credentials entitled to a seat on the 
floor of this House. 

Now, it does not seem possible that this House can take the view 
of my colleague from Ohio [Mr. Hurd] and hold that there is no 
vacancy in the representation of that State ; for if I understand his 
position, it is that there is no district in Ohio, neither the old Nine- 
teenth District nor the new Nineteenth, which can fill the vacancy oc- 
casioned by the resignation of General Garfield. If his view be the 
correct one, then the State of Ohio, which under the law of Congress 
passed in 1872 is entitled to twenty Representatives upon this floor, 
will be represented by only nineteen members. The act of Congress 
of 1872, which declares that this House shall consist of two hundred 
and ninety-two members, also declares that " the apportionment shall 
be as follows," and gives to the State of Ohio twenty Representatives. 

Now, if, as is claimed by my colleague, there is no vacancy, then 
Ohio must be content with nineteen Representatives, when, under the 
laws of the United States, she is entitled to twenty, and when the 
people of the State of Ohio, under the mandate of the Governor of 
that State, the highest authority of the State, have undertaken to 
supply the vacant seat in this House and complete her legal repre- 
sentation. 

The gentleman cites two cases, one from New Hampshire and the 
other from Louisiana. Now, if my friend will permit me to say it, 
both of those cases are against his view of the law, as he will find 
by a careful examination of them. Both of those cases held that 
there was a vacancy. In the New Hampshire case, the Governor of 
the State, unlike the Governor of the State of Ohio, issued his writ to 
the new district, and not to the old. It was a case precisely like the 
present one, the only difference in the facts being the one which I 
have just stated, that the Governor of New Hampshire issued his 
mandate for an election to the new district instead of to the old. 
When that case came before this House and was referred to the Com- 
mittee on Elections, the majority of that Committee, as well as the 
minority, held that there was a vacancy. 

In the Louisiana case both the minority and majority reports of 
the Committee on Elections held that, in a case like the present one, 
there was a vacancy, the two reports differing only as to the district 
which was entitled to fill that vacancy. 



66 SPEECHES AND ADDRESSES OF WILLIAM McKINLEY. 

So that in any event the precedents which the gentleman himself 
quotes are wholly against his view of the case, for they find a vacancy, 
and so declare clearly there was a vacancy. 

The only other question, Mr. Speaker, is, What district shall fill 
the vacancy ? Shall it be the new district, created by the act of 1880, 
or shall it be the old district created by the act of 1878, which old 
district had elected General Garfield to a seat in the Forty-sixth Con- 
gress, and which old district is to-day without a Representative here ? 
To say that the new district should elect, is to say that one county in 
the State of Ohio — the county of Portage — shall have two Eepresenta- 
tives in this body for the remainder of the Forty-sixth Congress; 
for Portage County is in the new district as created by the act of 
1880, and is also in the district which I have the honor to repre- 
sent in the present Congress, which district was created by the act 
of 1878. So that if you declare that the new district shall elect 
General Garfield's successor, then Portage County will have two mem- 
bers upon this floor, and the legal voters of Portage County will 
have participated in the election of two members to serve them at the 
same time and in the same Congress. Not only will this follow, 
Mr. Speaker, but it will follow that Mahoning County, which belongs 
to the old district and does not belong to the new, will be without 
any Rej^resentative in the National House of Representatives. 

It is proper for me to state in this connection that the only 
difference between the new and the old districts, so far as General 
Garfield's district is concerned, is the omission of Mahoning County 
by the act of 1880 and the substitution of Portage. Otherwise the 
new and old Nineteenth Districts are the same. In the one case, if 
you say that the election must be held in the new district, you give a 
double representation to one county ; if you say it shall be held in 
the old district, a constituency is unrepresented here, and will be so 
in that view all through this Congress. You say to them that they 
shall have no voice and no vote in this House. This, I say, is against 
the theory of our Government, the spirit of our political structure, 
and contrary to fair and just representation upon the part of the 
people ; while the double representation which would arise in the 
former case is against positive statute. Section 23 of the United 
States Statutes provides that " no one district shall elect more than 
one Representative." And if no district can elect more than one 
Representative, no part of a district can participate in the election of 
more than one Representative. 

Mr. Speaker, this question is not new, although it is somewhat 



THE CONTEST AGAINST JUDGE TAYLOR. 67 

interesting in some of its features. It was very fully discussed in 
the Thirty-first Congress by the leading men on both sides of the 
House ; and I want to read a single extract from the speech made 
at that time by Mr. Thompson, of Kentucky, upon the report of the 
Committee on Elections in the New Hampshire case. It covers this 
case exactly. It is found on page 185 of volume 23 of the Congres- 
sional Globe. Mr. Thompson said : 

The erroneous notions of the Chairman of the Committee [Mr. Strong] as to 
the purport of the word " vacancy " have led him into many devious, strange, and 
unsafe paths in regard to this question. He regards a vacancy as a mere diminu- 
tion of the number of Representatives to which a State is entitled ; and he de- 
duces from this assumption the doctrine that it matters not how the vacancy be 
filled so that the full complement of the State is restored. The Chairman says 
in his report that " each Representative is the representative of the entire people 
of a State." . . . The terms " representative " and " constituent " are correlative. 
A member of this House is the representative of his constituents — of the men 
who voted and constituted him their representative. What, then, is a vacancy ? 
It is the fact that a portion of the people are unrepresented. When a member 
resigns his seat, the people whose representative he was have lost the power of being 
heard upon this floor, and are entitled by the Constitution to have it restored. 

Indeed, the Constitution of the United States, in section 2, Arti- 
cle II, makes this declaration upon this subject : 

When vacancies happen in the representation from any State, the executive 
authority thereof shall issue writs of election to fill such vacancies. 

This is the clause to which Mr. Thompson refers. 

In order to ascertain who ought to participate in an election to fill a vacancy, 
it is only necessary to inquire what constituency the late member represented. 
There is in this case a vacancy in the representation of that portion of the people 
who chose General Wilson to serve them during the whole of this Congress ; and 
when you have found that subdivision of the State which sent him here you have 
found where the people reside who are not heard in this House, and who, in the 
person of the contestant, demand their constitutional rights at your hands. If 
you refuse him admittance, you refuse to allow the people to be represented. 
Nature abhors a vacuum in space, and republicanism abhors a vacuum in popular 
representation. Taxation without representation was an assumption the opposi- 
tion to which led our fathers into a war that lasted eight years, and has been 
called glorious. They were careful to provide against the maxim they abhorred 
in the Constitution of their adoption ; and it is to be hoped that we shall not 
repudiate the sentiments which they defended at so much cost and cherished 
with so much affection. 

Mr. Thompson further says : 

It will not change the complexion of the House. 

That is true in this case. 



68 SPEECBES AND ADDRESSES OF WILLIAM McKINLEY. 

Neither party will suffer by it. It will manifest to the country and voters 
everywhere that we do not like this rotten borough system. The representation 
of classes, and towns, and parties can not be silently allowed thus. 

I commend this language to my distinguished colleague. 

Now, upon this same subject and in this same line, on the 12th of 
November, immediately after the Governor of Ohio issued his man- 
date to the district constituted by the act of 1878, the Chicago Times 
spoke editorially upon this question, and put the case so well and so 
clearly that I beg to make the article a part of my remarks : 

Governor Foster, of Ohio, has received from the President-elect his resigna- 
tion of the seat he has occupied in the present House of Representatives, and has 
issued the executive mandate for a special election to fill the vacancy on Novem- 
ber 30th. Since the election of Mr. Garfield, two years ago, the Ohio Legislature 
has rearranged the Congressional districts. The present Ashtabula district has 
boundaries different from those of the Ashtabula district which elected Mr. Gar- 
field in 1878. The Governor's writ for a special election to fill Mr. Garfield's seat 
is not directed to the counties composing the present Ashtabula district, but to 
the counties composing the former Ashtabula district, which the Legislature has 
abolished. Mr. Garfield's immediate successor is therefore to be chosen by a con- 
stituency which apparently has no longer a legal existence, though it is the same 
constituency which chose Mr. Garfield for the period of two years. Governor 
Foster holds that the legislative abolition of a constituency which elected a Rep- 
resentative for a legally fixed term can not divest that constituency of the lawful 
right to choose a Representative for the unexpired remainder of that term. 

This view of the matter raises a novel question, though undoubtedly it is the 
correct view. It contemplates the Congressional district in the character of a 
political corporation, chartered by the National authority as States and counties 
are, for the administration of that authority to a particular purpose. In estab- 
lishing such districts the National authority (expressed in the act of Congress 
requiring Representatives to be chosen by single districts) is administered by the 
provincial Legislatures. When the Ohio Legislature had administered the Na- 
tional authority by erecting the Ashtabula district the electors of that district 
became a body politic and corporate by virtue of the National authority, clothed 
with the right of choosing a Representative in Congress for the term of two 
years. Of that right, and the corporate capacity to exercise it, the Ohio Legisla- 
ture could not afterward divest that corporation, as any act of the local Legisla- 
ture for that purpose, or of that effect, would be a direct contravention of the 
National authority. 

Now, Mr. Speaker, it seems to me that in the first instance Mr. 
Taylor is entitled to be sworn in ; and if my colleague insists upon 
any investigation of this case hereafter, let him prepare his objections 
and send them to the Committee on Elections of this House. It 
seems to me, further, that upon a plain, common-sense statement and 
view of the case, this House, if it should go into its merits, must, upon 



THE CONTEST AGAINST JUDGE TAYLOR. ^9 

a vote, award the seat to the member-elect from the Nineteenth Con- 
gressional District. It can not be said that the law of 1880 was in- 
tended to affect the Congressional districts as they were created in 
1878 in their relation to the Forty-sixth Congress. The law of 1880 
had reference to future Congresses ; it had to do with the Forty- 
seventh Congress, and under the act of 1880 the people of Ohio 
elected Representatives to the Forty-seventh Congress. I assert that 
the districting act of 1878, and upon which all the people of the State 
acted in the Congressional elections of that year, must, for repre- 
sentative purposes, continue through two years ; and so far as the 
Forty-sixth Congress was concerned, the law of 1878 had given to 
every district thus created a vested right of representation in that 
Congress during its whole existence, and no subsequent legislation 
can deprive that constituency of the vested right given them by that 
act, and none was intended by the Legislature. And if a vacancy 
occurs either by death or resignation, that vacancy must be filled by 
the district as organized by the act of 1878. I insist, thei-efore, that 
the member-elect, Mr. Taylor, is entitled to qualify at once and be 
accorded his seat here. 

Before yielding the floor to my colleague [Mr. Butterworth] I 
will append to my remarks the opinion of the Attorney-General of 
the State of Ohio, given to Governor Foster in pursuance of his re- 
quest before the writ of election was issned : 

State of Ohio, Attorney-General's Office, 

Nocemher 10^ 18S0. 

Dear Sir : Your favor of this date, in regard to the vacancy caused by the 
resignation of Hon. James A. Garfield, Representative in the Forty-sixth Congress 
of the United States from the Nineteenth Congressional District of Ohio, has been 
received. That district, under the act of the General Assembly of Ohio, passed 
May 15, 1878 (0. L., vol. 75, page 582), was composed of the counties of Geauga, 
Lake, Ashtabula, Trumbull, and Mahoning. On the 26th of February, 1880 (0. 
L., vol. 77, page 11), the State of Ohio was divided into new districts for the pur- 
pose of representation in Congress. Under that act the Nineteenth Congressional 
District is composed of the counties of Ashtabula, Trumbull, Portage, Geauga, and 
Lake. The question now arises whether the vacancy caused by the resignation of 
General Garfield shall be filled by the counties composing the Nineteenth Con- 
gressional District, as constituted by the act of May 15, 1878, or by the counties 
composing the Nineteenth Congressional District as constituted by the act of 
February 26, 1880. In my opinion, the Nineteenth Congressional District, as cre- 
ated by the act of May 15, 1878, has become possessed of a vested right. That 
right is to have a Representative in the Forty-sixth Congress of the United States 
until March 4, 1881. Subsequent legislation upon the part of the General Assem- 
bly of the State of Ohio can not deprive this district of that right. I am there- 
fore of the opinion that the Nineteenth Congressional District of Ohio, as consti- 
tuted by the act of May 15, 1878, has the right to fill the vacancy caused by the 
resignation of James A. Garfield as its Representative in Congress. 

Very truly, yours, George K. Nash, Attorney-General. 

Hon. Charles Foster, Governor of Ohio, 



THE TARIFF COMMISSION. 

Speech in the House of Representatives, Forty-seventh 

Congress, April 6, 1883. 

[From the Congressional Record.'] 

The House being in Committee of the Whole for the consideration of the bill 
(H. R. No. 2,315) to provide for the appointment of a commission to investigate 
the question of the tariff and internal revenue laws, Mr. McKinley said — 

Mr. Chairman : The tariff question has again forced itself into 
prominence. While it has never ceased to be a question upon which 
the political parties of the country have made some declaration, yet 
for many years other issues have in a great measure determined party 
divisions and controlled party discipline. The last Presidential cam- 
paign brought recognition and discussion of this issue, and it may be 
fairly said that Republican advocacy of the protective principle con- 
tributed in no small degree to the success of the Republican National 
ticket. It can safely be asserted that the doctrine of a tariff for rev- 
enue and protection as against a tariff for revenue only is the domi- 
nant sentiment in the United States to-day ; and if a vote upon that 
issue, with every other question eliminated, could be had, the majority 
would not only be large, but surprisingly large, for the protective 
principle. 

The Democratic majorities in the Forty-fourth, Forty-fifth, and 
Forty-sixth Congresses, although committed by party utterances and 
by platforms as well as the pledges of leaders to a reduction of duties 
to a revenue basis, were unable, with all their party machinery and 
the free use of the party lash, to advance even a step in that direc- 
tion. Every proposition for a change was met with the almost solid 
opposition of this side of the House, which, with the assistance of a 
few Representatives on the other side from Pennsylvania and the 
New England States, was strong enough to insure, and did insure, 
the substantial defeat of every measure looking to a disturbance of 
the existing tariff rates. 



THE TARIFF COMMISSION. 71 

Much criticism is indulged in by the Democratic party upon the 
enormities of our tariff, and yet with those years of power, in absohite 
control of the House, and a part of that time controlling the Senate 
as well, nothing was accomplished by way of removing the so-called 
enormities, and at last the party was compelled to confess that it was 
unable to make any progress in that direction. 

This is some evidence at least of the domination in this country 
of the protective idea, or else it demonstrates the infidelity of the 
Democratic party to its professed principles ; one or the other. I 
prefer to interpret the former as its meaning. The sentiment is 
surely growing. It has friends to-day that it never had in the past. 
Its adherents are no longer confined to the North and the East, but 
are found in the South and in the West. The idea travels with in- 
dustry, and is the associate of enterprise and thrift. It encourages 
the development of skill, labor, and inventive genius as part of the 
great productive forces. Its advocacy is no longer limited to the 
manufacturer, but it has friends the most devoted among the farmers, 
the wool growers, the laborers, and the producers of the land. It is 
as strong in the country as in the manufacturing towns or the cities ; 
and while it is not taught generally in our colleges, and our young 
men fresh from universities join with the free-trade thought of the 
country, practical business and every-day experience later teach them 
that there are other sources of knowledge besides books, that demon- 
stration is better than theory, and that actual results outweigh an 
idle philosophy. But, while it is not favored in the colleges, it is 
taught in the school of experience, in the workshop, where honest 
men perform an honest day's labor, and where capital seeks the de- 
velopment of National wealth. It is, in my judgment, fixed in our 
National policy, and no party is strong enough to overthrow it. 

It has become a part of our system, interwoven with our business 
enterprises everywhere, and is to-day better entitled to be called " the 
American system" than it was in 1824, when Henry Clay christened 
it with that designation. Fixed as I believe the principle is, the 
details of an equitable and equal adjustment of a schedule of duties, 
recognizing fully this idea, fair to all interests, is the work of this 
House, either through its appropriate Committee, or calling to its aid 
primarily a commission of experts, as proposed by the bill now under 
consideration. My own preference would be that Congress should do 
this work, and delegate no part of it to commissions or committees I 
unknown in this body. This, however, is a matter of personal judg- ' 
ment, about which men equally intelligent and honest, equally devoted 



Y2 SPEECHES AND ADDRESSES OP WILLIAM McKlNLEY. 

to the principle of protection, may differ, and which from any point 
of view is in no wise essential or material. If we can get as good 
work, or better, from a commission of practical experts, all ought to 
be satisfied, and all will be. 

Then, again, this side of the House is in some sense committed to 
a commission. In the last Congress the minority of the Ways and 
Means Committee, consisting of Messrs. Garfield, Kelley, Conger, and 
Frye, in a report made to the House May 24, 1880, to accompany 
House Bill 6,188, recommended, as a substitute for the bill, the bill of 
Senator Eaton, " which provides for a tariff commission to report a 
comprehensive measure on the same subject." 

■The business men of the country have spoken for a commission. 

The National Tariff Convention, which met in Chicago on No- 
vember 15 and 16, 1881, declared for a commission in the following 
resolution : 

' Resolved, That this convention recommends the passage of an act by Con- 
gress providing for the appointment by the President, by and with the consent 
of the Senate, of a commission to revise our revenue system, including both the 
internal revenue and tariff laws, in the interest of protection and needed revenue. 

And the New York Convention, held November 29 and 30, 1881, 
passed the following resolution : 

Resolved, That in order to prepare for such an intelligent revision by the 
tariff laws as will give full and harmonious effect to the protective policy. Con- 
gress is asked to pass a law authorizing the appointment of a civilian commis- 
sion with power to investigate fully the cost of labor, manner of living, and 
efficiency of the laborers in this country and elsewhere, and the interrelations, 
condition, and needs of our industries, and to report the testimony, with the rec- 
ommendation for such Congressional action as it may deem beneficial ; and that, 
pending this investigation, disturbing and destructive assaults upon protective 
duties or special industries shall not be permitted. 

I The manufacturers of my own State and district, without excep- 
tion, favor it. Indeed, the sentiment of protectionists everywhere, so 
far as any expressions have been had, seems to be overwhelmingly in 
favor of a commission, I will vote for the bill now under consid- 
eration, because, among other reasons, I have no fear of an intelligent 
and businesslike examination and revision of the tariff by competent 

i civilians, who shall be known Americans, favorable to the American 
system. If this bill becomes a law it will not prevent consideration 
of some of the important questions demanding immediate attention, 
arising under interpretations of existing law. There are excrescences 
in the present tariff which should be removed. There are incongrui- 



THE TARIFF COMMISSION. Y3 

ties which should be corrected. There are wrongs growing out of 
decisions of the Treasury Department and the courts which ought to 
be remedied at once, commission or no commission ; matters which 
ought not to be delayed for the adjustment of a commission, and 
which, if they are to be postponed until a commission that we may 
create shall make its report and Congressional action be had thereon, 
ouffht to defeat the whole scheme of a commission. The free list 
might be enlarged without affecting injuriously a single American 
interest. 

I can not refrain from saying that we are taking a new and some- 
what hazardous step in delegating a duty that we ought ourselves 
to perform — a duty confided to us by the Constitution, and to no 
others. It is true that a commission does not legislate, and, there- 
fore, its work may or may not be adopted by Congress. This is the 
safety of the proposition. The information it will furnish will be 
important, and its statistics of rare value, but the same sources of 
information are open to Congress and to the Committee on Ways 
and Means as will be available to a commission ; and as the former 
will ultimately have to deal with the question practically in Congress, 
it has seemed to me, if that Committee were willing to undertake 
the task and had the requisite time to perform it, it would be the 
wisest and most certain course to the accomplishment of results 
desired by all. 

The argument that the proposition for a commission is the sugges- 
tion of the protectionists to secure delay and to postpone present ac- 
tion upon the tariff comes with bad grace from the party upon the 
other side of this House. It wasted six years and secured no revision 
of the tariff. It refused, in the Forty-sixth Congress, to pass the Eaton 
bill for a tariff commission, which required the report to be made on 
the 1st of January last, and which, if they had acted upon it during 
the closing session of the Forty-sixth Congress, the work of the com- 
mission would now have been in the possession of Congress for imme- 
diate consideration and practical action. My friend from Kentucky 
[Mr. Turner], in his speech of March 8, 1882, said : 

I regard it [a coraraission] like an affidavit filed in a criminal case, merely 
for the continuance of a bad cause. 

If a bad cause, why did not your party abate it when you were in 
power ? If it is an affidavit for a continuance, I beg to remind the 
gentleman that it was his party which prepared and filed it nearly 
two years ago, when it had the House and the Senate, and could have 



74 SPEECHES AND ADDRESSES OP WILLIAM McKINLEY. 

disposed of it according to its own liking. Senator Eaton, a distin- 
guished Democrat, high in the councils of his party, presented the 
original bill, and for many months it was on the Speaker's desk of a 
Democratic House, where it was left undisposed of, insuring still 
further postponement. The Democratic party, and no other, is re- 
sponsible for the delay, and I charge any injury which delay has pro- 
duced upon it. 

The fundamental argument for protection is its benefits to labor. 
That it enables the manufacturer to pay more and better wages than 
are paid to like labor and services anywhere else will not be dis- 
puted. 

There is not a branch of labor in the United States that does 
not receive higher rewards than in any other country. Our laborers 
are not only the best paid, clothed, and educated in the world, but 
they have more comforts, more independence, more of them live in 
houses that they own, more of them have money in savings institu- 
tions, and are better contented, than their rivals anywhere else. And 
this, according to my view, is the result of protection — of the protec- 
tive system that was enacted by the Republican party. 

My friend from New York [Mr. Hewitt], who now does me the 
honor to listen to my remarks, was pleased, a few years ago, to an- 
nounce an axiom in the school of protection which ought to be per- 
petuated. He declared at that time, what I have never seen better 
stated anywhere, that " free trade will simply reduce the wages of 
labor to the foreign standard." 

Mr. Hewitt. Will the gentleman quote the authority for that? 

Yes, sir; I will. Will the gentleman deny it? 

Mr. Hewitt. I do not know ; I will tell you in a moment when I hear where 
it is. 

I did not expect to go into this so fully, but simply to make that 
single quotation. But as the gentleman from New York calls for 
the authority, I beg to invite his attention to a correspondence that 
took place between himself and Mr. Jay Gould in 1870, and which I 
found published in the Bulletin of the American Iron and Steel 
Association for February 4, 1880 ; and I am glad to read this corre- 
spondence, because it so fully and clearly expresses the true ground 
upon which we base our advocacy of protection to-day. That was 
only twelve years ago. 

I read first a letter from Mr. Jay Gould to Mr. Hewitt. 



THE TARIFF COMMISSION. 75 

Office of the Erie Railway Company, 
l\ew York, January 36, 1870. 

Dear Sir : Herewith I send you a printed circular received by me this morn- 
ing, requesting my signature to a memorial upon the subject of the duty on steel 
rails, forwarded with the circular, provided the views expressed were concurred 
in by me. 

It seemed to me that our policy should be to foster and encourage home prod- 
ucts rather than open our markets to such a formidable competition as would 
inevitably result from the reduction so strongly urged in the memorial. By 
establishing extensively the manufacture of steel rails on our own soil and pro- 
tecting their production by a tariff which would effectually prevent the importa- 
tion of European rails to any great extent, we could, in my opinion, be largely 
the gainers in the long run ; for the capital invested would all be kept in the coun- 
try; our operatives would find constant and lucrative employment, and the gen- 
eral effect upon our business could not fail to be beneficial. I am at a loss to 
perceive why we should contribute so large an amount annually to build up the 
trade and manufactures of foreign countries while our own interests are sacrificed 
by just so much. 

Entertaining these views, I do not feel at liberty to attach my signature to 
the memorial. I should be pleased, however, to have your views on the subject ; 
and should you coincide with me in the opinion I have given, I shall feel 
strengthened in the conviction that the gentlemen whose names are attached to 
the circular have made a mistake. Respectfully, yours, 

Abram S. Hewitt, Esq., Jay Gould, President. 

No. 17 Burling Slip, Neiu York City. 

To which letter my friend from New York [Mr. Hewitt] made the 
following reply, as I find it in the Bulletin (I have never seen either 
of the originals, and they may not be the letters of the gentlemen) : 

New York, January 27, 1870. 

Dear Sir : I beg leave to acknowledge the receipt of your favor of the 26th 
instant, and to state that I not only fully concur in the views which you express 
in regard to the duties on steel and iron rails, but am at a loss to add anything 
which will make them more forcible. And I venture to suggest that you will 
allow rae to send a copy of your letter to the Committee on Ways and Means. 

The fact is that steel and iron rails can be made in suitable localities in this 
country, and notably on the line of the Erie Railway, with as little labor as in any 
part of the world ; and the only reason why we pay more for American rails is 
because we pay a higher rate for the labor which is required for their manufac- 
ture, but for no greater quantity of labor. 

Then comes the remark I quoted — 

Free trade will simply reduce the wages of labor to the foreign 
standard — 

The very language, it will be observed, I quoted from the gentle- 
man — 

6 



V6 SPEECHES AND ADDRESSES OP WILLIAM McKINLEY. 

which will enable us to sell our rails in competition with foreign rails. But as a 
matter of course — 

And I want gentlemen to note this — 

But as a matter of course the ability of the laborer to consume will be reduced 
and a serious loss will be inflicted on commerce, general industry, and the business 
of the railways especially. 

The only reason why a tariff is necessaiy is to supply the laborer with such 
wages as will enable him to travel and consume not merely the necessaries but 
some of the luxuries of modern civilization. 

And yet, the other day, the gentleman declared on the floor of 
this House that protection had nothing to do with the wages of labor. 

Mr. Hewitt. Now, will the gentleman allow me 

Yes, sir ; right now. 

Mr. Hewitt. If you are through with the letter. 

There is another sentence : 

Besides, if we have free trade we can not expect to procure our supplies from 
abroad by increased shipments of grain ; for already the European markets take 
from us all that they require, and no amount of purchases of goods from them will 
induce them to buy more food than they need, and which they now take as a 
matter of necessity. Faithfully, yours. 

Jay Gould, Esq., President Erie Railivay, Abram S. Hewitt. 

Mr. Hewitt. If the gentleman from Ohio will permit me to interrupt him I 
will make the answer now ; otherwise I will wait until he gets through. 

Does the gentleman deny the letters? 

Mr. Hewitt. On the contrary, they are genuine. 

That is all I want to know. The gentleman can reply to me 
later. 

Mr. Hewitt. But in saying they are genuine allow me to say also they are 
in strict conformity with the principles I laid down in ray speech : that if you 
desire to preserve the iron and steel business you can only do it by a compensa- 
tory tariff. That is the exact doctrine which I laid down in my speech. 

Mr. Kelley. a compensatory tariff is not a protective tariff. 

Mr. Hewitt. I beg the gentleman's pardon. However, I am trespassing 
upon the indulgence of the gentleman from Ohio. 

I am glad always to be able to serve the gentleman from New 
York. 

Mr. Hewitt. The compensation required in order to enable the iron business 
to exist in this country, as stated in my speech, is that which provides for the 
difference paid in the price of labor less the cost of transportation. 



THE TARIFF COMMISSION. ^Y 

That is the gentleman's resolution. 

Mr, Hewitt. I have slated that doctrine in my resolution, and I adhere 
to it. 

And yet in that connection, if the gentleman will permit me, he 
declared in his speech made here the other day, and to be found on 
page 2,436 of the Record : 

Wages in this country are therefore not regulated hy the tariff, because what- 
ever wages can be earned by men in the production of agricultural products, the 
price of which is fixed abroad, must be the rate of wages which will be paid sub- 
stantially in every other branch of business. 

Mr. Hewitt. Certainly. 

That is what he said in his speech of but a week ago. Yet in the 
letter from which I have quoted he declared that the only need we 
have of protection is for the purpose of maintaining the rate of wages 
in the United States. 

Mr. Hewitt. As to the iron and steel business and protected industries, and 
in no other. 

What is true of the iron and steel industries is true of every other 
industry that comes in competition with pauper labor in Europe — I 
care not what it is, cotton or wool, pottery or cutlery. If we have to 
compete with the pauper labor of Europe, and with the products of 
that labor, we need just as much relative protection in one branch of 
industry as we need in another. 

Mr. Hewitt. Only as to the protected industries. 

Only as to the protected industries? I do not care what the pro- 
tected industries are or what you include in them. If we have to 
compete with foreign pauper labor and want to become successful 
manufacturers, we must have the same protection upon every other 
manufactured article as we have upon iron and steel. 

Mr. Hewitt. And that I deny. 

I know you deny it ; you have already denied it. But you have 
established a principle 

Mr. Hewitt. Yes. 

You have established a principle which must be general if it is 
worth anything. 

Mr. Bayne. It may make some difference whose ox is gored. [Laughter.] 
Mr. Hewitt. No ; it makes no difference. 

To resume my discussion, Sir Edward Sullivan declares a fact in 



78 SPEECHES AND ADDRESSES OF WILLIAM McKINLEY. 

the August number of the Nineteenth Century worthy of considera- 
tion. He says : 

The position of the operative under protection in America is better in every 
respect than the position of his mate under free trade. Operatives from all parts 
of the world flock to America, the land of protection ; not one ever comes to Eng- 
land, the land of free trade. 

Mr. Chairman, the wages question as related to the tariff is well 
illustrated by the following from the Rice Association of Georgia : 

In the period between 1840 and 1860 the duty on foreign rice was absolutely 
needless as a protection to the American producer, and valueless as a source of 
revenue to the Government. The farmer was wholly independent of protection 
to an industry maintained by labor in cheapness second to that of Asia only, and 
in effectiveness unsurpassed. By reason of that cheap labor he was in a position 
to defy competition, and triumphantly met the almost free importation of East 
India rice, even in the English markets. 

The per diem of slave labor at that time did not much, if at all, 
exceed twenty cents. 

This fact is the best argument that can be made, and needs no 
elaboration. It tells the whole story. With slave labor at twenty 
cents per day, or Asiatic cheap labor, we need no protection, and save 
for the purposes of revenue our customhouses might be closed. When 
the South depended upon the labor of its slaves, and employed little 
or no free labor, it was as earnest an advocate of free trade as is Eng- 
land to-day. Now, tliat it must resort to free labor, it is placed upon 
the same footing as Northern producers ; it is compelled to pay a like 
rate of wages for a day's work, and therefore demands protection 
against the foreign producer, whose product is made or grown by a 
cheaper labor. And we find all througli the South a demand for 
protection to American industry against a foreign competition, bent 
upon their destruction and determined to possess the American 
market. 

Then, under our system and social structure the male and adult 
portion of our population perform the farm and manufacturing labor 
to a greater degree than in any other nation in the world. This must 
^be considered in treating the question of labor. 

Mr. Russell, of Massachusetts, in his valuable speech has compiled 
some figures, from which I make the following summary : 

In the United States, in 1870, there were engaged in agricultural 
pursuits fourteen males to one female. In Great Britain and Ireland, 
at the same time, there were engaged in the same pui-suits six males 
to one female. 



THE TARIFF COMMISSION. 79 

In manufacturing, mechanical, and mining industries here, there 
were engaged seven males to one female ; in Great Britain and Ire- 
land, two males to one female. 

Children employed in the United States under sixteen years of 
age, twelve adults to one child ; in Great Britain and Ireland, four 
adults to one child. 

This contrast is creditable to our civilization, and if the complete 
census of 1880 on this subject was accessible, it would show even a 
more marked and more favorable contrast for us. I am enabled to 
furnish only statistics concerning our iron and steel industries. Mr. 
Swank says in his census report : 

The total number of hands employed in 1880 was 140,978. Of the whole num- 
ber, 133,303 were men above sixteen years old, and forty-five were women above 
fifteen years old ; 7,709 were boys below sixteen years old, and twenty-one were 
girls below fifteen years old. The remarkably small number of sixty-six women 
and girls employed in the manufacture of iron and steel in 1880 will not escape 
notice. The comparatively small number of boys employed is also worthy of 
notice. 

And I beg also to read the following significant figures touching 
the savings of labor : 

Lowell, Massachusetts, is about twenty-five miles from the seacoast, with an 
area of about 7,000 acres. It has a population of 60.000, the largest in the State 
or in the United States wholly engaged in the manufacture of textile fabrics, and 
therefore well illustrates the condition of our industrial classes in our New Eng- 
land manufacturing centers. 

Of the 60,000 inhabitants, 22,559 are employed in the various corporations and 
mills. There are seven banks of discount, with a capital of $2,500,000. There 
are six savings banks, with a total deposit of |11,646,212 to the credit of 33,408 
depositors. Of this number, 1,735 are depositors of amounts above $300, and 
31,673 depositors of $300 and under ; showing how general the habit of saving has 
become among our people, and what a large proportion of the funds in the sav- 
ings banks are the earnings of the wage laborers. 

I have it from authority that fully seven eighths of the deposits in these sav- 
ings banks are the laid-by earnings of the wage laborers. 

In Lawrence, with a population of 43,000, grown up wholly out of manufac- 
turing and now supported by it, we find a like result. There are 13,000 oper- 
atives, three savings banks, with $5,000,000 deposits, and 13,728 depositors. 

Manchester, England, corresponds with these two cities in its occupations 
more nearly than any other. Let us contrast the condition of its people : Man- 
chester, with a population of 341,508, has in its various savings banks £1,434,140, 
or $6,883,872 ; a city three and a half times as large as Lowell and Lawrence 
combined, and less than one half the amount of deposits in its savings institu- 
tions. 

I commend these facts to the other side of this House, who claim that the 



80 SPEECHES AND ADDRESSES OF WILLIAM McKINLEY. 

\ wage laborers in this country are no better off with our wages and cost of living 
1 than those in England. 

Our position, from an English standpoint, is thus set out by Mr. 
J. E. Cairnes, Professor of Political Economy in University College, 
London. He says : 

If only American laborers and capitalists would be content with the wages 
and profits current in Great Britain, there is nothing that I know of to prevent 
them from holding their own in any markets to which Manchester and Sheffield 
send their wares. 

But our laborers are not satisfied, and ought not to be, with the 
wages current in Great Britain. Against this there is universal dis- 
approval. 

And this brings us to the heart of the question. Over a large portion of the 
great field of industry the people of the United States enjoy, as compared with 
those of Europe, advantages of a very exceptional kind ; over the rest the advan- 
tage is less decided, or they stand on a par with Europeans, or possibly they are 
iu some instances at a disadvantage. 

Engaging in the branches of industry in which their advantage over Europe 
is great, they reap industrial returns proportionately great, and so long as they 
confine themselves to these occupations they can compete in neutral markets 
against all the world, and still secure the high rewards accruing from their excep- 
tionally rich resources. 

How like a Democratic speech this sounds ; it might well have 
been made on the other side of the Chamber ! But the people of the 
^* Union decline to confine themselves within these liberal bounds. 



They would cover the whole domain of industrial activity, and think it hard 
that they should not reap the same rich harvest from every part of the field. 

And I may add that they are quite content with their success. 

They must descend into the arena with Sheifield and Manchester, and yet 
secure the rewards of Chicago and St. Louis, They must employ European 
conditions of production and obtain American results. What is this but to 
quarrel with the laws of Nature ? These laws have assigned to an extensive 
range of industries carried on in the United States a high scale of return, far in 
excess of what Europe can command, to a few others a return on a scale not ex- 
ceeding the European proportion. American enterprise would engage in all de- 
partments alike, and obtain upon all the high rewards which Nature has assigned 
only to some. Here we find the real meaning of the " inability " of Americans to 
compete with the " pauper labor " of Europe. They can not do so and at the 
same time secure the American rate of return on their work. The inability no 
doubt exists, but it is one created not by the drawbacks but by the exceptional ad- 
vantages of their position. It is as if a skilled artisan should complain that he 
could not compete with the hedger and ditcher. Let him only be content with 
the hedger and ditcher's rate of pay, and there will be nothing to prevent him 
from entering the lists even against this rival. 



THE TARIFF COMMISSION. 81 

But our laboring men are not content with the hedger and 
ditcher's rate of pay. No worthy American wants to reduce the 
price of labor in the United States, It ought not to be reduced ; for 
the sake of the laborer and his family and the good of society it 
ought to be maintained. To increase it would be in better harmony 
with the public sense. Our labor must not be debased, nor our 
laborers degraded to the level of slaves, nor any pauper or servile 
system in any form, nor under any guise whatsoever, at home or 
abroad. Our civilization will not permit it. Our humanity forbids 
it. Our traditions are opposed to it. The stability of our institu- 
tions rests upon the contentment and intelligence of all our people, 
and these can only be possessed by maintaining the dignity of labor 
and securing to it its just rewards. That protection opens new 
avenues for employment, broadens and diversifies the field of labor, 
and presents variety of vocation, is manifest from our own experi- 
ence. 

Mr. Chairman, I was surprised, the other day, to hear my distin- 
guished and learned friend from Kentucky [Mr. Carlisle], in his 
ably constructed speech, declare that protection brought no blessings 
which could not be secured from a tariff for revenue only ; and he 
pointed to the period from 1850 to 1860 as the "golden era" in this 
country, when general prosperity prevailed and when unparalleled 
blessings were dispensed to all the people of every section. Now, lest 
I may do him injustice, I beg to read from his speech made on that 
day. He said : 

We are not without the benefit of experience upon this subject— not English 
experience, but American experience. 

There never has been such a period of general prosperity and growth in this 
or any other country as that extending from 1850 to 1860, when we had not free 
trade but a tariff for revenue, with such incidental protection as necessarily re- 
sulted from the imposition of moderate duties upon imported goods, a tariff under 
which the average rates during the whole period on all dutiable articles were less 
than twenty-three per cent, and on free and dutiable only nineteen per cent. It 
was the golden era in our history, notwithstanding the financial disturbances of 
1857, from which the country recovered in a single year. 

Agriculture, manufactures, commerce, the arts and sciences, the social condi- 
tion of the people, and the advance in population and aggregate wealth made 
such progress as has never been made before or since. 

This was uttered on the 29th day of March of this year on this 
floor. Now, let us see what was our true condition between 1850 and 
1860, the period when a revenue tariff prevailed in the United States. 
I believe that I shall be able to show that at no period in our history 



82 SPEECHES AND ADDRESSES OF WILLIAM McKINLEY. 

\ were times ever so bad, was business so universally depressed, and the 
{ people at large so disastrously affected as during most of the period 
, from 1850 to 1860. The low tariff of 1846 commenced its havoc 
upon business even before the year 1850. In December, 1849, a 
' prominent manufacturing firm thus speaks of the condition of the 
' iron trade : 

And, first, what is tlie real condition of the domestic iron trade ? 

This was December 26, 1849, the last week of the last month pre- 
ceding the beginning of that " golden era " of which the gentleman 
from Kentucky spoke the other day. 

And, first, wliat is the real condition of the domestic iron trade ? Is it actually 
depressed and threatened with ruin, or does all the outcry proceed from men who, 
having realized " princely fortunes " annually, are now clamorous because their 
profits are reduced to reasonable limits, or from another class who, having erected 
works in improper locations, desire not so much to make iron cheaply as to build 
up villages and speculate in real estate ? Undoubtedly to some extent there are 
such cases, . . . but as to the great fact, that the great majority of establishments 
judiciously located and managed with proper skill and economy have been com- 
pelled to suspend work throughout the land for want of remunerative work, there 
can not be a shadow of a doubt. 

Again, of fifteen rail-mills, only two are in operation, doing partial work, and 
that only because their inland position secured them against foreign competition, 
for the limited orders of neighboring railroads, and when these are executed not a 
single rail-mill will be at work in the land. 

This gloomy picture, I repeat, was drawn on the 26th of Decem- 
ber, 1849— only five days before the opening of that " golden era " 
described by the gentleman from Kentucky ; and this statement was 
not made by a wild enthusiast of protection from Ohio or Pennsyl- 
vania, demanding an increase of the tariff, but by no less distin- 
guished authority than the celebrated firm of Cooper and Hewitt, of 
which my distinguished friend from New York was and is the junior 
member. 

Now, let us go a little further. On the 12th of August, 1850, 
during the first year of this " golden era," Hon. Joseph Casey, then a 
Representative from Pennsylvania, declared in a speech on the floor 
of this House : 

The whole history of the manufacture of iron in Pennsylvania shows that in 
a period of seventy-five years there have been erected 500 furnaces, and out of 
them 177 failures, or where they have been closed, or sold out by the sheriff. Out 
of this 177 failures, 134 have occurred since the passage of the tariff of 1846. 

This was said only four years later : 



THE TARIFF COMMISSION, 83 

And out of 300 blast-furnaces in full operation when the tariff of 184C was 
enacted into a law, 150, or fully one half, had stopped several months ago, and 
fully 50 more are preparing to go out of blast. 

This was the first year of the "golden era "referred to by my 
learned friend from Kentucky. 

But let me proceed further, Mr, Chairman, and call your attention 
to a message of Millard Fillmore, President of the United States, who 
was required by the Constitution to report to Congress the condition 
of the country. I ask attention to an extract from his message, to be 
found in the journal of this House, first session, Thirty-second Con- 
gress, page 26. The date of this message is December 2, 1851. 
President Fillmore says : 

The values of our domestic exports for the last fiscal year, as compared with 
those of the previous year, exhibit an increase of $43,040,323. At first view this 
condition of our trade with foreign nations would seem to present the most flat- 
tering hope of its future prosperity. An examination of the details of our ex- 
ports, however, will show that the increased value of our exports for the last fiscal 
year is to be found in the high price of cotton which prevailed during the last 
half of that year, which price has since declined about one half. The value of 
our exports of breadstuffs and provisions, which it was supposed the incentive of 
a low tariff and large importations from abroad would have greatly augmented, 
has fallen from $68,701,921 in 1847 to $20,051,373 in 1850, and to $21,848,653 in 
1851, with a strong probability, amounting almost to a certainty, of a still further 
reduction in the current yeai-. The aggregate values of rice exported during 
the last fiscal year, as compared with the previous year, also exhibit a decrease 
amounting to $460,917, which, with a decline in the values of the exports of to- 
bacco for the same period, make an aggregate decrease in these two articles of 
$1,156,751. 

Will my friend listen to this ? 

The policy which dictated a low rate of duties on foreign merchandise, it was 
thought by those who promoted and established it, would tend to benefit the 
farming population of this country — 

And you all speak for the farmers as though you were their 
divinely constituted guardians — 

by increasing the demand and raising the price of agricultural products in foreign 
markets. 

The foregoing facts, however, seem to show incontestably that no such result 
has followed the adoption of this policy. 

If it did it not then, I ask you what assurance we have it will do 
it if you adopt it now, thirty years later in the history of the Govern- 
ment? 

I now call your attention to another message of the same Presi- 



84 SPEECHES AND ADDRESSES OP WILLIAM McKINLEY. 

dent, a year later, found in the journal of the second session of the 
Thirty-second Congress, pages 15 and 16 : 

In my first annual message to Congress I called your attention to what seemed 
to me some defects in the present tariff, and recommended such modifications as 
in my judgment were best adapted to remedy its evils and promote the prosperity 
of the country. Nothing has since occurred to change my views on this impor- 
tant question. 

Without repeating the arguments contained in my former message in favor of 
discriminating protective duties, I deem it my duty to call your attention to one 
or two other considerations affecting this subject. The first is the effect of large 
importations of foreign goods upon our currency. Most of the gold of California, 
as fast as it is coined, finds its way directly to Europe in payment for goods pur- 
chased. In the second place, as our manufacturing establishments are broken 
down by competition with foreigners, the capital invested in them is lost, thou- 
sands of honest and industrious citizens are thrown out of employment, and the 
farmer, to that extent, is deprived of a home market for the sale of his surplus 
produce. In the third place, the destruction of our manufactures leaves the for- 
eigner without competition in our market, and he consequently raises the price of 
the article sent here for sale, as is now seen in the increased cost of iron imported 
from England. The prosperity and wealth of every nation must depend upon its 
productive industry. The farmer is stimulated to exertion by finding a ready mar- 
ket for his surplus products, and benefited by being able to exchange them, with- 
out loss of time or expense of transportation, for the manufactures which his com- 
fort or convenience requires. This is always done to the best advantage where a 
portion of the community in which he lives is engaged in other pursuits. But 
most manufactures require an amount of capital and a practical skill which can 
not be commanded unless they be protected for a time from ruinous competition 
from abroad. 

I will not detain the Committee with further reading from this 
message, but will ask your attention now to the message of the last 
Democratic President of the United States. I call attention to Mr. 
Buchanan's message, see Journal of the first session, Thirty-fifth Con- 
gress, pages 19, 20, 21, and 22. I shall not have time to read all of 
this extract, but shall take the liberty of putting so much as I may 
deem best in the remarks I shall publish. I read from page 19. 

A Member. What date ? 

December 8, 1857. 

Since the adjournment of the last Congress our constituents have enjoyed an 
unusual degree of health. [Laughter.] 

I suppose that is what the gentleman referred to as one of the 
blessings of the " golden era " from 1850 to 1860 ; and so it was, and 
we should be thankful for that. 

The earth has yielded her fruits abundantly and has bountifully rewarded the 



THE TARIFF COMMISSION. 85 

toil of the husbandman. Our great staples have commandecl high prices, and, up 
till within a brief period, our manufacturing, mineral, and mechanical occupations 
have largely partaken of the general prosperity. We have possessed all the ele- 
ments of material wealth in rich abundance, and yet, notwithstanding all these 
advantages, our country, in its monetary interests, is at the present moment in a 
deplorable condition. In the midst of unsurpassed plenty in all the productions 
and in all the elements of National wealth we find our manufactures suspended, 
our public works retarded, our private enterprises of different kinds abandoned, 
and thousands of useful laborers thrown out of employment and reduced to want. 
The revenue of the Government, which is chiefly derived from duties on imports 
from abroad, has been greatly reduced, while the appropriations made by Congress 
at its last session for the current fiscal year are very large in amount. 

And this was during the " golden era " of my learned friend from 
Kentucky [Mr. Carlisle]. 

Under these circumstances a loan may be required before the close of your 
present session ; but this, although deeply to be regretted, would prove to be 
only a slight misfortune when compared with the suffering and distress prevailing 
among the people. With this the Government can not fail deeply to sympathize, 
though it may be without the power to extend relief. 

Again, in his next message President Buchanan says : 

In connection with this subject, it is proper to refer to our financial condition. 
The same causes which have. produced pecuniary distress throughout the country 
have so reduced the amount of imports from foreign countries that the revenue 
has proved inadequate to meet the necessary expenses of the Government. To 
supply the deficiency. Congress, by the act of December 23, 1857, authorized the 
issue of $20,000,000 of Treasury notes ; and this proving inadequate, they author- 
ized, by the act of June 14, 1858, a loan of $20,000,000, " to be applied to the pay- 
ment of appropriations made by law." 

No statesman would advise that we should go on increasing the National debt 
to meet the ordinary expenses of the Government. This would be a most ruinous 
policy. In case of war our credit must be our chief resource, at least for the first 
year, and this would be greatly impaired by having contracted a large debt in 
time of peace. It is our true policy to increase our revenue so as to equal our ex- 
penditures. It would be ruinous to continue to borrow. Besides, it may be 
proper to observe that the incidental protection thus afforded by a revenue tariff 
would at the present moment, to some extent, increase the confidence of the man- 
ufacturing interests and give a fresh impulse to our reviving business. To this 
surely no person will object. 

Mr. Carlisle. Has my friend from Ohio among his notes any description 
of the condition of the country under the high tariff from 1873 to 1878? If he 
has not, I can furnish it to him from the gentleman from Pennsylvania [Mr. 
Kelley], the present distinguished Chairman of the Committee on Ways and 
Means. 

I shall come to that. 



86 SPEECHES AND ADDRESSES OP WILLIAM McKINLEY. 

Mr. Kelley. As the gentleman from Kentucky has alluded to me, permit 
me to say 

This does not come out of my time, I hope. 

Mr. Kelley. Of course not. Let the reasons I assigned for the depression 
also be printed, for they are the true ones. 

Mr. Updeoraff, of Ohio. The loan was needed. 

Yes ; the loan was needed, as my friend and colleague suggests, 
and I will reach that later on. Now, I desire to call attention, as my 
friend from Kentucky invokes the authority of the distinguished 
Chairman of the Committee on Ways and Means and begs to call my 
attention to it — I desire in this connection to give a little page in 
the history of that gentleman, touching the period from 1850 to 
1860 ; and as I am somewhat worn out, if the Clerk will read what I 
have marked I will be obliged. This is a portion of the statement 
and the reasons assigned by the distinguished gentleman from Penn- 
sylvania for abandoning the theory of free trade and adopting the 
principles of protection to American industries. 

The Clerk read as follows : 

Were we early revenue reformers worshipers at false shrines 

Mr. Kelley. If the Clerk will send me the volume, and ray friend from 
Ohio will permit, I will read the language, as I am familiar with it. 

I am very much obliged to the distinguished gentleman from 
Pennsylvania, and will gladly have him read the extract. 

Mr. Kelley (reading) : 

Were we early revenue reformers worshipers at false shrines, or did the sequel 
approve our faith ? History answers these questions with emphasis. It needed 
but a decade to demonstrate the folly of attempting to create a market for our 
increasing agricultural productions, and to develop our mining and manufactur- 
ing resources by the application of the beautiful abstractions disseminated by 
free-trade leagues. It was just ten years after the substitution of the revenue 
tariff of 1846 for the protective tariff of 1842 that the general bankruptcy of the 
American people was announced by the almost simultaneous failure of the Ohio 
Life and Trust Company and the Bank of Pennsylvania, and the suspension of 
specie payments by almost every bank in the country. In that brief period our 
steamers had been supplanted by foreign lines, and our clipper ships driven from 
the sea or restricted to carrying between our Atlantic and Pacific ports. At the 
close of that brief term, the shipyards of Maine were almost as idle as they are now 
when railroads traverse the country in all directions and compete with ships in car- 
rying even such bulky commodities as sugar, cotton, and leaf tobacco ; and while the 
families of thousands of unemployed workmen in our great cities were in want of 
food, Illinois farmers found in corn, for which there was no market, the cheapest 
fuel they could obtain, though their fields were underlaid by an inexhaustible 
deposit of coal that is almost coextensive with the State. Capital invested in 



THE TARIFF COMMISSION. 37 

factories, furnaces, forges, rolling-mills, and machinery was idle and unproduc- 
tive, and there was but a limited home market for cotton or wool. Taking 
advantage of this condition of affairs, foreign dealers put their prices down suf- 
ficiently to bankrupt the Cotton States, to induce many of our farmers to give up 
sheep raising, and to constrain many thousand immigrants who could not find 
employment to return to their native countries. Eighteen hundred and forty- 
seven had been a good year for farmers, mechanics, miners, and merchants ; but 
1857 was a good year for sheriffs, constables, and marshals, though few were pur- 
chasers at their sales except mortgagees, judgment creditors, and capitalists who 
were able to pay cash at nominal prices for unproductive establishments, and 
hold them till happier circumstances should restore their value. 

Not one of the glowing predictions of political economy had been fulfilled, 
and the surprise with which I contemplated the contrast presented by the condi- 
tion of the country with what it had been at the close of the last period of pro- 
tection amounted to amazement. 

I am very much obliged to my friend from Pennsylvania, Now, 
I desire, as throwing some light upon the blessings resulting from 
the era referred to, to call the attention of the Committee to the 
question of wages, to which I believe the gentleman from Kentucky 
referred, and who declared that the wages of the laboring classes were 
as good during that period as at any other period previous or since. 
On the 14th day of February, 1859, the operatives of the Pembroke 
mills, in the State of Massachusetts, in convention assembled, passed 
the following resolution : 

That we, the spinners, etc., have long enough endured the low prices for our 
hard labor — wages which are too low to live by — 

All this during the " golden era," remember — 

too low to live by, as we can not meet our bills for the necessities of life with such 
a contemptible compensation for our labor as has been paid us for the last year. 

Let this example suffice of the universal distress among the wage- 
earners of that period. Hundreds of such could be adduced — and 
yet " the half not told " of the misery that prevailed among all classes 
and conditions of skilled and unskilled American workingmen. 

Now, coming down to December 17, 18G0, the last year of the last 
month of this halcyon period, I find an act of Congress, passed De- 
cember 17, 1860, authorizing the issue of certain Treasury notes. 
Treasury notes were issued redeemable at the expiration of one year 
from date ; and this shows the financial condition of the countrv 
during the concluding year of that decade, after a tariff for revenue 
only had had full opportunity to produce its best results, and to 
demonstrate, if it could, its highest good. I find these Treasury notes 



88 SPEECHES AND ADDRESSES OF WILLIAM McKINLEY. 

were sold under that act as follows, and the percentage shows the 
discount : 

At 6 per cent $70,200 

At 7 per cent 5,000 

At 8 per cent 24,500 

At 8i per cent 33,000 

At 8f per cent 10,000 

At 9 per cent ; 65,000 

At 9i per cent 10,000 

At 91^ per cent 160,000 

At 9f per cent 77,000 

At 10 per cent 1,027,500 

At lOi per cent 266,000 

At 10^ per cent 623,000 

At lOf per cent 1,367,000 

At 11 per cent 1,432,700 

At 12 per cent 4,840,000 

Total $10,010,900 

Which shows that during the closing year of that free-trade period, 
that has been denominated one of exceptional prosperity, the finan- 
cial credit of this Government was so bad that our Treasury notes 
sold from six to twelve per cent discount. 

I come now to February 8, 1861, the beginning of the second 
month of the next year, when Congress authorized a loan of 125,000,- 
000 of bonds bearing six per cent, and having twenty years to run. 
There were disposed of, in amount, only $18,000,000, for the Govern- 
ment could not dispose of the remainder of the loan, and what were 
sold were sold at a discount of $3,019,776. Six-per-cent bonds sold 
for 89.1 cents on the dollar, at the very close of that glorious period 
when all, as we are told, was blazing in the splendor of prosperity. 

So low had the credit of the Government fallen at that time that 
the Secretary of the Treasury, in January, 1861, suggested to Con- 
gress as a financial resource that the several States be asked, as secu- 
rity for the repayment of any money the Government might find it 
necessary to borrow, to pledge the deposits received by them from the 
Government under the act for the distribution of the surplus revenues 
of 1836 ; the Secretary believing that a loan contracted on such a 
basis of security, superadding to the plighted faith of the United 
States that of the individual States, could hardly fail to be acceptable 
to capitalists. 

Thus was this Government driven by your revenue policy to the 
brink of financial ruin, with neither money nor credit ; a condition 



THE TARIFF COMMISSION. 89 

that necessitated a Democratic Secretary of the Treasury to solemnly 
suggest to Congress that the States should be asked to indorse the 
paper of the Government of the United States. Think of our Gov- 
ernment going out and asking somebody to go her bail that she might 
borrow money in the money centers of the world, and of her own citi- 
zens ! We have no such trouble now. Twenty years of protection have 
given us a good credit, have given us a good currency, an overflow- 
ing Treasury, and universal prosperity, enabling us to borrow all the 
money we want at three and a half per cent, and the lender must pay 
a premium to get it at that. Contrast that period with the " golden 
era" described by the gentleman from Kentucky [Mr. Carlisle], when 
the tariff policy he advocates led this Government to the condition 
which I have described. I thank God that policy does not prevail 
to-day, and protection needs no other defense. [Applause.] 

There are some industries in the United States, notably that of 
tin plate manufacturing and the manufacture of pottery, which are 
inadequately protected. Of the former, the Secretary of the United 
States Iron and Tin-plate Company says : 

About eight years ago, when the tin-plate industry was entirely dead in this 
country, the prices of tin plate were so high that some enterprising citizens came 
to the conclusion that they could invest their money profitably by building tin- 
plate works. At first the prospects were favorable, but the prices of imported 
plates went down lower and lower, until our home manufacturers were compelled 
to abandon the business and leave their works standing idle, yet the agitation for 
better protection has been kept up, and by that the price of tin plate has been 
kept down. But if Congress refuses again to lend an ear to the urgent appeals we 
have made so many times, the agitation on the subject will die out, and the price 
of tin plate will go up, and instead of making English manufacturers pay a rev- 
enue for dealing in our markets, we shall have to submit to their laying a heavy 
tax upon us because we did not protect ourselves. 

This condition should no longer be permitted. Legislation which 
will revive this palsied industry should be enacted at once. 

The manufacture of pottery, although early started, is among the 
new industries in the United States, and none more worthy. Its 
growth has not been rapid, but substantial. It has made progress 
against the fiercest opposition of British manufacturers. It has been 
forced to fight prejudice at home and unscrupulous rivals abroad. It 
has happily triumphed over all. Its annual products have reached 
five millions of dollars, and are not excelled in quality anywhere, 
while the price to the consumer has been largely diminished. In the 
days of the gold premium the tariff was moderately protective. Since 
resumption it has been wholly inadequate. The price paid to labor 



90 SPEECHES AND ADDRESSES OF WILLIAM McKINLEY. 



is 100 per cent more than is paid in the English potteries, and 90 per 
cent of the cost of the product is labor. With labor equal, or made 
equivalent by the duty, they can successfully compete with the best 
potteries of the world. We have good raw material, skilled labor, 
new and valuable improvements. Our decorated ware is not excelled 
anywhere. All that is needed is a just and fair protection, and we 
will fail in our duty if it is not accorded. Forty per cent ad valorem 
is wholly insiifficient. 

I shall in this connection, without taking the time of the Commit- 
tee to give it in detail, put in my remarks a statement of the cereal 
productions in 1850, 1860, 1870, and 1880. We produced in 1850 
100,000,000 bushels, in round numbers, of wheat ; we produced in 
1880, 459,000,000 bushels of wheat. We produced, in 1850, 592,000,- 
000 bushels of Indian corn; and in 1880 we produced 1,754,861,535 
bushels. And I might go through this contrast with oats, and bar- 
ley, and buckwheat, etc., taking in all the cereal products, and show 
that the like of it was never before known in the industrial history 
of any country in the world. The following is the table in detail : 



Articles. 


Bushels 

produced 

in 1850. 


Wheat 

Rye 


100.485,944 

14,188,813 

592.071,104 

146,584,179 

5,167,015 

8,956,912 

867,453,967 


Indian corn. . 
Oats 


Barley 

Buckwheat.. . 

Total 



Bushels pro- 


ease 
1850. 


duced in 1860. 


Incr 

for 

over 




Per ct. 


173,104,924 


72 


21,101,380 


48 


838,792,742 


41 


172,643,185 


17 


15,825,898 


206 


17,571,818 


96 


1,239,039,947 


42-8 



Bushels pro- 
duced in 1870. 



287,745,626 

16,918,795 

760,944,549 

282,107,157 

29,761,305 

9,821,721 



1,387,299,153 



Bushels pro- 
duced in 1880. 



459,479,505 

19,831,595 

1,754,861,535 

407,858,999 
44,113,495 
11,817,327 



2,697,962,456 



" o 



Per ct. 
60 

17 
130 
44 
48 
20 



They talk about the farmer not being protected. Why, sir, he is 
protected in nearly everything he grows or raises, and protected just 
as much as he wants to be ; just as much as he asks to be. He is pro- 
tected in his horned cattle, in his hogs, in his sheep, in his bacon, in 
his hams, in his cheese, in his pork, in his corn, in his wheat, in his 
cotton, his tobacco, his sugar, and his wool. 

My friend from New York [Mr. Hewitt] proposes to take the duty 
off wool ; indeed, he proposes to take the duty off all raw materials. 
When he does that, the farmer in the United States will be compelled 
to dismiss his flocks, sheep husbandry will fall into decay, and the 
woolen manufactures will go down. 

Mr. Updegeaff, of Ohio. But the farmer will vote first. 



THE TARIFF COMMISSION. 91 

Yes, as my friend suggests, the farmer will vote first, and he will 
vote for that party and that individual who will stand by him in pro- 
tecting the products of his labor and his farm from the cheaper labor 
of the products of the Old World. The farmer is protected by the 
levy and collection of duties on his products as follows : 

Hogs, horned cattle, horses, sheep, and all other animals, pay a 
duty of 30 per cent ; bacon and ham pay a duty of 2 cents per pound ; 
beef, 1 cent per pound ; butter, 4 cents per pound ; cheese, 4 cents per 
pound ; condensed milk, 20 per cent ; lard, 2 cents per pound ; pre- 
served meats, 35 per cent; mutton, 10 per cent; pork, 1 cent per 
pound ; tallow, 1 cent per pound ; glue, 20 per cent ; barley, 15 cents 
per bushel ; bread and biscuit, 20 per cent ; Indian corn, 10 cents per 
bushel ; cornmeal, 10 per cent ; oats, 10 cents per bushel ; rye, 15 
cents per bushel ; wheat, 20 cents per bushel ; wheat flour, 20 per 
cent ; all other small grain, and other preparations of breadstuffs for 
food average 18.56 per cent ; fruits, from 10 to 35 per cent ; flaxseed 
or linseed, 20 cents per bushel ; wool, hay, hoj^s, rice, tobacco, pota- 
toes, sugar, all pay a duty. I need not further amplify. 

The condition of American farmers to-day is better than at any 
other time in our history, while the condition of the farmers of Eng- 
land was never so deplorable as now. We have a protective tariff ; 
England has a tariff for revenue only. 

Every country has its peculiar conditions which must be recog- 
nized by its lawmakers. Each nation must legislate for its own, 
study its own interests, take care of its own industries and its own 
people. When this is done, American statesmen have discharged 
their highest duty, and can with safety leave to other nations the duty 
of legislating for themselves. England's boasted free trade is Eng- 
land's protection and profit if she could induce the world to enter 
upon the same policy. Her seaports, open only partially even now, 
were not open until after years of practical prohibition. At last she 
conceived her power to profitably manufacture for the world and an- 
nounced it, but at the present time she levies and collects duties on 
imports, producing to her a large revenue — duties not upon luxuries 
but upon articles of the highest necessity, like tea and coffee. Her 
tariff is a tariff for revenue only ; the same which is advocated on 
the other side of this House, and which was announced in the last 
Democratic National platform. With all her boasted professions and 
her invitation to the world to accept her theory of universal brother- 
hood, Great Britain has not free trade within her own borders and in 
her own possessions. 
7 



92 SPEECHES AND ADDRESSES OP WILLIAM McKINLEY. 

George Baden Powell, an Euglish author and free trader, declares, 
in his book on Protection and Hard Times : 

It is, however, a matter of notoriety that many of our colonies at the present 
do impose duties for avowedly protective purposes. The colony of Victoria is a 
notable instance, more especially as she holds to her position in spite of the tend- 
encies of the surrounding colonies toward free trade. It may well be asked. Why 
have any of the provinces of the British Empire the right, how have they the 
license, to adopt other than free-trade principles ? 

It would be well for the distinguished author to look after Can- 
ada, which in March, 1879, adopted a high protective tariff and is 
prospering under it to-day. 

In a word, by the imposition of duties for purposes other than those for rev- 
enue, a province of the empire at once invades the domain of imperial interests, 
at once challenges the control of the imperial authorities. 

There are but two or three colonies [says the same author] that avowedly im- 
pose duties on imports for the purpose of protecting their industries. There is 
nothing impracticable in the prospect of the various provinces of the British Em- 
pire banding themselves together and jealously maintaining as secure a freedom 
of intercourse among themselves, as close a commercial union, as that rigorously 
maintained by the citizens of the United States. 

So that the free trade which England teaches and cajoles us to 
follow she fails to practice at home, and looks forward with fond ex- 
pectancy to the time when that same freedom of intercourse, that 
close commercial union, shall exist in all the British Empire as is 
rigorously maintained by the citizens of the United States. Here we 
have unrestricted trade among ourselves, no impost duties, no dis- 
criminating tax between the States. The markets of California are 
, open to the manufactures of Maine. Ohio sends her manufacturing 
\ and other products, freely and without restraint, to every State of the 
Union. The products of one State are as free to the citizen of an- 
ther State as those of his own. "We impose duties only on the prod- 
ucts of foreign labor and capital. 

The early history of Great Britain upon the tariff has been often 
told, but loses none of its force by repetition. England declared her- 
self not only " the sole market for American products," " the sole 
storehouse for American supplies," but also " the workshop of the 
world." Parliament enacted that — 

The colonies must not only sell exclusively in British markets, but they must 
also buy exclusively in British markets. It was intended that no commodity of 
the growth, production, or manufacture of Europe should be imported into Brit- 
ish plantations but such as are laden and put on board in England, Wales, or 



THE TARIFF COMMISSION. 93 

Berwick-upon-Tweed, and in English-built shipping, whereof the master and 
three fourths of the crew were English. 

The preamble to this statute, which was supplemental to the 
Navigation Act, declares : 

The maintaining a greater correspondence and kindness between the subjects 
at home and those in the plantations, keeping the colonies in a firmer dependence 
on the mother country, making them yet more beneficial to it in the further em- 
ployment and increase of English shipping and in the vent of English manufac- 
tures and commodities, rendering the navigation to them more safe and cheap, 
and making this kingdom a staple not only of the commodities of the plantations 
but also of the commodities of other countries and places for their supply ; it be- 
ing the usage of other nations to keep their plantation trade exclusively to them- 
selves. 

In 1710 the House of Commons declared that " the erecting of manufactories 
in the colonies tended to lessen their dependence on Great Britain." In 1732 the 
importation of hats from province to province, and the number of apprentices, was 
limited. In 1750 the ei-ection of any mill or engine for slitting or rolling iron 
was prohibited. In 17G5 the exportation of artisans from Great Britain was pro- 
hibited under a heavy penalty. In 1781 utensils required for the manufacture of 
wool or silk were prohibited. In 1782 the prohibition was extended to artificers 
in printing calicoes, muslins, or linens, or in making implements used in their 
manufacture. In 1785 the prohibition was extended to tools used in iron and 
steel manufacture, and to workmen so employed ; in 1 799 it was extended so as to 
embrace even colliers. 

This is the early record, rigorously adhered to and enforced with 
an iron hand. British free trade is the voice of interest and selfish- 
ness, not principle. American protection is the voice of intelligent 
labor and American development. Its benefits must be manifest to 
the most casual student of industrial history. No man will be found 
who would declare that our present advanced position of manufac- 
tures could or would have been reached without the aid afforded by a 
wise system of protection. Commencing without capital or experi- 
ence, we have grown to such extent as to be the wonder of the civilized 
world. Even Mr. Hewitt, although differing from my conclusions, is 
forced to say that to any one studying the condition of this country 
at the present time three things are evident : first, that we are the 
most prosperous people in the world ; secondly, that we are paying 
the highest wages of any people in the world ; lastly, that we have 
the highest tariff duties of any nation in the world. Why, sir, in 
1858 the United States received a great majority of its manufac- 
tured articles from England ; to-day we manufacture for ourselves, 
and as exporters have but one equal. From thirteen States we leap 



9i SPEECHES AND ADDRESSES OF WILLIAM McKINLEY. 

to thirty-eiglit ; from three millions of population we now number 
fifty-one millions. 

It would be impossible [says Mr. Mulhall, an English statistician, whom Mr. 
Hewitt quotes approvingly] to find in history a parallel to the progress of the 
United States in the last ten years. Wealth and property have everywhere in- 
creased ; comforts, education, the schoolhouse, the church, are within the reach 
and enjoyment of every citizen of the Republic. 

In this connection permit me to call the attention of the Commit- 
tee to the following exhibit of the export and import trade of the 
United States for the last few years, taken from the Eeport of the 
Secretary of the Treasury : 

The exports as contrasted with the imports during the last fiscal year (1881) 
are as follows : 

Exports of domestic merchandise $883,925,947 

Exports of foreign merchandise 18,451,399 

Total $902,377,346 

Imports of merchandise 642,664,028 

Excess of exports over imports of merchandise $259,712,718 

Aggregate of exports and imports _. $1,545,041,974 

Compared with the previous year, there was an increase of $66,738,688 in the 
value of exports of merchandise, and a decrease of $25,290,118 in the value of im- 
ports. The annual average of the excess of imports of merchandise over exports 
thereof for ten years previous to June 30, 1873, was $104,706,922 ; but for the last 
six years there has been an excess of exports over imports of merchandise amount- 
ing to $1,180,668,105— an annual average of $196,778,017. The specie value of 
the exports of domestic merchandise has increased from $376,016,473 in 1870 to 
$883,925,947 in 1881, an increase of $507,309,474, or 135 per cent. The imports 
of merchandise have increased from $435,958,408 in 1870 to $642,664,628 in 1881, 
an increase of $206,706,220, or 47 per cent. 

This remarkable showing, which is under our present protective 
system, inspired my friend from Tennessee [Mr. Whitthorne], a 
Democratic Representative, to say in his recent able speech upon 
another subject : 

This is a most gratifying exhibit of commercial progress and prosperity. 
And when we compare this aggregate of exports and imports with that of the 
principal commercial powers of the world, and see from that comparison that we 
are now the peer of the greatest, save and except only the United Kingdom of 
Great Britain and Ireland ; and reflecting that under the control and administra- 
tion of that Government there are quite two hundred and fifty millions of people, 
we have just cause of pride in the miraculous growth and progress of the trade 
of our people. 

We have, indeed, just cause of pride in the wonderful growth of 



THE TARIFF COMMISSION. 95 

our trade. "Why enter upon a new policy, I ask ? "Would any busi- 
ness man whose ledger showed such results embark in new and doubt- 
ful experiments ? He would pass unheeded the allurements of the 
dreamer and the theorist. He would pursue the old way, which had 
secured him success, and discard all new theories which experience 
had not proved sure and beneficial. The same conservatism should 
guide the Nation as controls the individual citizen in the conduct of 
his business. 

The aggregate of American industries [says Mr. Mulhall, the English author] 
has risen thirty-five per cent in the last ten years ; the ratio per inhabitant to the 
population has increased one third in the interval ; the actual increase of Ameri- 
can industry. $2,541,000,000; whereas the maximum among European nations, 
that of Great Britain, was only |1,631,080,000. 

Ten years ago the balance of trade was against this country, but 
now the exports are thirty-one per cent over imports. Ten years ago 
we lagged far behind France or Germany as regards steel, but now 
produce more than both those countries combined. We make more 
than one fifth of the iron and more than one quarter of the steel of 
the world. In mining we have increased ninety per cent in the last 
decade, and to-day we represent thirty-six per cent of the mining 
industries of the world, Great Britain thirty-three per cent, and other 
nations thirty-one per cent. Agriculture shows a healthy increase. 
Farming stock increased thirty- three per cent. In ten years we have 
built 42,000 miles of railroad — an increase of one hundred per cent. 

Taxation has been reduced from thirteen and a half per cent of 
income in 1870 to nine and a quarter per cent in 1880, being now 
only half of what it is in France, and one fourth less than in Great 
Britain. 

The reduction of the principal of our public debt since 1870, and 
up to March, 1882, has averaged $116,560.22 per day, including Sun- 
days and holidays. 

The ratio of debt per inhabitant has fallen forty-two per cent, 
that of interest fifty-four per cent, in ten years. Population has in- 
creased thirty-one per cent since 1870. 

We produce thirty per cent of the meat and thirty per cent of the 
grain of the world. These figures illustrate our growth and pros- 
perity, and include the disastrous year of 1873 and the subsequent 
years of depression. 

In my State the growth of the iron industries has been most grati- 
fying. The first furnace built in Ohio was in 1803-04, located in 
Poland Township, Mahoning County, constituting a part of my pres- 



96 SPEECHES AND ADDRESSES OF WILLIAM McKINLEY. 

ent district. That county to-day is practically peopled with furnaces, 
mills, and factories, and tunneled with mines, while their products 
are renowned the country over ; and like evidences of prosperity in 
agriculture, manufacturing, and mining are found in Carroll, Colum- 
biana, and Stark, the remaining counties which compose the district 
I have the honor to represent. The State now ranks second in iron 
and steel manufactures in the Union. Her thrift and energy, her 
great natural resources, aided by protection, have enabled the State 
to take the position which she now holds. She wants no legislation 
which shall disturb her present prosperity or curtail her future growth. 
There is perhaps no better exponent of our progress than the in- 
creased production of coal, the great motive power of industry and of 
commerce. 

Who has demanded a tariff for revenue only, such as is advocated 
by our friends on the other side? What portion of our citizens? 
What part of our population ? Not the agriculturist ; not the laborer ; 
not the mechanic ; not the manufacturer ; not a petition before us, to 
my knowledge, asking for an adjustment of tariff rates to a revenue 
basis. England wants it, demands it — not for our good, but hers ; 
for she is more anxious to maintain her old position of supremacy 
than she is to promote the interests and welfare of the people of this 
Republic, and a great party in this country voices her interests. Our 
\ tariffs interfere with her profits. They keep at home what she wants. 
We are independent of her ; not she of us. She would have America 
;the feeder of Great Britain, or, as Lord Sheffield put it, she would be 
I" the monopoly of our consumption and the carriage of our produce." 
She would manufacture for us, and permit us to raise wheat and corn 
for her. We are satisfied to do the latter, but unwilling to concede 
to her the monopoly of the former. 

Much idle talk is indulged in about manufacturing monopolies in 
the United States, and everything is called a monopoly that prospers ; 
everybody who gets ahead in the world is, in the minds of some peo- 
ple, a monopolist. ] We have few, if any, manufacturing monopolies 
' in the United States to-day. They can not long exist with an unre- 
stricted home competition such as we have. They feel the spur of 
competition from thirty-seven States, and extortion and monopoly 
can not survive the sharp contest among our own capitalists and en- 
(^ terprising citizens. There may be some here and there, but as a rule 
we have none; and yet the gentlemen who shout the loudest against 
monopolies are found advocating a doctrine which, if carried into 
practical operation, would break down American manufactures and 



THE TARIFF COMMISSION. 97 

give England the unbridled monopoly of American markets. Eng- 
lish monopoly does not disturb them ; it is American monopoly that 
distresses their souls. Under the cry of a " bounty-fed monopoly " 
they would transfer manufacturing from American citizens to foreign 
citizens. For one, Mr. Chairman, speaking for myself, I declare that 
I would rather America and American manufacturers should have the 
monopoly of American consumption than that England should have 
it ; and I would infinitely prefer that the American laborer and the 
American mechanic should have the monopoly of supplying the 
American markets than that English laborers and mechanics should 
have it. 

No man can outdo me in opposition to monopolies ; but the manu- 
facturers of this country should not be thus characterized. They 
have no princely fortunes ; in general they have no independent 
means. Their all is in the brick and mortar of their establishments, 
in the machinery, in the organization, in their trade. And how many 
of them to-day w^ould be willing to sell out for first cost, and below 
first cost, if they could do it ! He who would break down the manu- 
factures of this country strikes a fatal blow at labor. It is labor I 
would protect. 

My friend from New York [Mr. Hewitt] told us about the uncer- 
tainty of business the other day, when he assured us that in six years, 
from 1873 to 1879, he lost $100,000 a year in the manufacture of iron. 
He knows that it is not all profit. It is work of the brain ; it is work 
of the nerve forces ; it is work of the hands ; and it is worry, worry 
all the time. And yet gentlemen would howl down a protective tariff 
because there are, in fact or imagination, manufacturing monopolies 
in the United States. 

The effect of protection upon the price of products to the Ameri- 
can consumer has been often stated, and can be illustrated by taking 
any of the protected articles which are manufactured in the United 
States. It will be observed that the price not only diminishes, but in 
nearly every case the quality of the product has been improved. 
There is no department of manufacture in this country which has re- 
ceived protection sufficient to encourage capital to embark in it and 
enable it to compete successfully with foreigners for the trade of the 
United States, but has resulted in the falling of prices to the con- 
sumer. 

Cast steel furnishes a marked illustration of this statement. It 
has been stated to me that consumers of the higher grades of crucible 
best cast steel in England pay higher prices for best cast steel of Eug- 



98 SPEECHES AND ADDRESSES OF WILLIAM McKINLEY. 

lish manufacture than is paid by our consumers of the same grades 
from the same manufacturers, showing that the English manufac- 
turers of cast steel are conceding more than the amount of duty in 
favor of the American market. Another important point should not 
be lost sight of, that when the English manufacturers of crucible best 
cast steel were receiving from the American consumer thirty-eight 
per cent over and above what they are willing to sell at the present 
time, they were better able to furnish our people steel at the present 
reduced price than they are now. 

A large quantity of best cast steel in the shape of circular-saw 
plates is consumed in this country, and to the lumber interest it is 
an important article. Before the passage of the present tariff laws, 
when this class of steel was not made in the United States, the saw- 
makers of this country depended upon the English manufacturers for 
their supply, and were forced to pay 35 to 40 cents per pound in gold 
for the large sizes. These plates of the same size are now furnished 
at 26 cents per pound, being a saving of 30 per cent, or more than 
double the rate of the tariff to the saw manufacturers of this country. 
I am informed that one of the most extensive manufacturers of saws 
in the United States estimates the gain to the lumber interest since 
the passage of the tariff of 1864, of a sum exceeding 87,000,000 on 
saw steel. A like advantage has been gained by the same lumber 
interest by the saving of money in the cost of axes. Before the 
present law was enacted best axe steel, manufactured in England, sold 
at 17 cents per pound, gold. The price is now 10^ cents per pound. 
In the manufacture of reapers and mowers (a large and valuable 
industry in my own district), one thousand tons of section crucible 
best cast steel is now used annually in this country. Before the pres- 
ent tariff law went into effect, this article of English manufacture 
was sold at 17 cents per pound in gold, and now is furnished at 10 
cents or under, producing a saving to the farmers of this country of 
more than 40 per cent, or twice the rate of tariff on the article, and a 
saving in the aggregate since 1864 of more than $1,250,000. This is 
one of the ways that the agriculturist is taxed for the benefit of 
monopolies. The prices of steel plows, hay rakes, grain drills, har- 
rows, and other agricultural implements have been reduced to such 
low figures that but few if any are imported ; and the farmers have 
saved millions of dollars by the provisions of the present law. 

Again, crucible tool best cast steel used in the manufacture of all 
descriptions of tools, drills, sledges, etc., employed in mining, before 
the enactment of our protection laws, of English manufacture, brought 



THE TARIFF COMMISSION. 99 

17 cents in gold per pound, and now it can be bought at 10 cents, 
fully equal in quality to that for which 17 cents was paid per pound, 
making a saving of 38 per cent, equal to more than twice the sum 
charged as duty. From a careful estimate, it seems that about 20,000 
tons of this description of cast steel are consumed in this country 
annually, saving to the carpenter, the miner, and the machinist, 
$2,500,000. 

We produce over three quarters of the crucible cast steel used in 
this country. The effect of protection in reducing the price of cast 
steel is not confined alone to this article, but applies to nearly every 
description of manufacture. Take, for example, the cotton manu- 
factures ; the same kind and quality of goods are now in the market 
which were first made in this country, and therefore an exact com- 
parison can be made, which in many other branches of the textile in- 
dustry can not be made. 

The tariff act of 1816 imposed on cotton goods a square-yard 
duty of 6J cents. The effect of the protection is seen in the prices of 
heavy sheetings, stated by Mr. Nathan Appleton, as follows : Price 
in 1816, 30 cents per yard ; 1819, 21 cents per yard ; 1826, 13 cents 
per yard ; 1829, 8^ cents per yard ; 1879, according to Recce's Dry 
Goods Chart, the average price was 7.8 cents per yard. To-day the 
price is 8 cents per yard. The goods of 1816 and 1882 are the same 
in quality. 

The manufacture of prints or calicoes was not successful until 
1825. According to Mr. Appleton, the average price per yard in 1825 
war 23.07 cents; 1830, 16.36 cents; 1835, 16.04 cents; 1840, 12.09 
cents; 1845, 10.9 cents; 1850, 9.24 cents; 1855, 9.15 cents; in 1860, 
according to Eeece's Chart, 9.50 cents; 1878, 6.09 cents; present 
price, 6-2" cents. 

According to Eeece, the prices of print cloths, or plain undyed cot- 
ton cloths for printing, were, in 1860, 5.44 cents ; 1878, 3.44 ; Feb- 
ruary 14, 1882, 3.75. 

Bleached shirtings were first made in 1828, of a weight of 2.80 
yards to the pound. Prices, in 1860, according to Reece, 15.50 cents ; 
1878, 11 cents. 

Brown drillings, an article of American invention, sold by package 
in 1828 for 15.50 cents. Price in 1860, according to Eeece, 8.92 
cents ; 1878, 7.65 cents. 

Jeans, a lighter twilled fabric than drillings, was first introduced 
by our mills, in 1826. No article of the kind could then be bought in 
our stores for less than 30 to 35 cents. The first American article, 
.L.ofC. 



100 SPEECHES AND ADDRESSES OP WILLIAM McKINLEY. 

better in quality than any foreign make imported, was sold for 23 
cents. The prices in 1860 were 6J to 9 cents. 

The manufacture of printed lawns commenced about 1846. Both 
foreign and American lawns were sold in our market in 1847 for 
from 13 to 15 cents. The market price in 1881 was a little below 10 
cents. 

It is more difficult to make a comparison of prices of woolen goods 
illustrating the effect of the tariff. Hon. John L. Hayes, Secretary 
of the National Association of Wool Manufacturers, says : 

Reliable returns of the two leading agencies of flannel wools in the country, 
representing more than twenty different establishments, show that the selling 
prices in 1869, after the tariff of 1867, were in one house 20 per cent less in gold 
than in 1860. On the other hand, the books of a mill producing cloths more ex- 
tensively than any other establishment in the country, and employing 2,500 oper- 
atives, show an advance of wages in gold from 1860 to 1869 of 37 per cent for 
female operatives and 50 per cent for male operatives. These facts show con- 
clusively that the protection to the woolen industry, if to no others, has been a 
boon to laborers and consumers. Certain cashmerets which brought 46 cents per 
yard in 1860 were rated at 38^ cents per yard in 1880. 

If you would warm a free trader into wrath and excite him to 
violent denunciation, exhibit an American blanket made in an Amer- 
ican factory, of American wool, by American labor. This article 
above all others is seized by the free trader as an illustration of the 
vice and enormity of our tariff. Now, what are the facts? 

A certain fixed style of blankets of medium grade sold in 1860 as follows: A 
9-7 blanket for |1.87i. a 10-4 article for |2.27i to $2.50. Sales of precisely the 
same goods were for the former at $1.75 and for the latter at $2.25, with wools at 
3 to 4 cents higher in 1880 than in 1860, and labor in the mills from 15 to 20 per 
cent in advance of 1860. 

Those most familiar with the markets, of whom I have made careful inquiries, 
estimate that ordinary woolen goods, constituting the great bulk of consumption, 
are now obtained by consumers at prices from 12^ to 25 per cent less than goods 
of the same quality could be purchased for before the war. 

The same is true of the rice industry, as shown by the following, 
taken from the report of the special committee of the Savannah 
(Georgia) Eice Association, which shows the effect of protection on 
the rice industry of the United States : 

It is only left to infer that the effect of the import duty has been extraordi- 
nary increase in the production of American rice and correspondent reduction of 
price. In sixteen years the crops have increased more than tenfold, and prices 
have declined from 100 to 150 per cent. It has induced active competition with 
foreign importation without reducing its volume. 



THE TARIFF COMMISSION. 101 

It seems, then, evident that the average profits on American rice are at pres- 
ent dependent on the maintenance of the import duty, and if the latter is re- 
moved or materially reduced the cultivation of the former must be abandoned as 
a staple product and the lands returned to Nature. There are now cultivated in 
rice more than 155,000 acres, affording livelihood to more than 160,000 persons. 

Another instance in point is in the price of pottery. Goods in 
that line are selling 50 per cent cheaper than in 1860 under the old 
24-per-cent duty. These examples, and more which I might present, 
demonstrate that protective duties are not a tax upon the consumer, 
but universally cheapen the price of consumption to the people. 

There is one other subject to which I want to refer briefly, be- 
cause it has been drawn into this debate. 

The Treasury rulings interpreting existing tariff laws are alarm- 
ing the industries of the country. Already some industries have been 
disastrously afEected, and others will follow in their train if Congress 
does not intervene with positive legislation to prevent. The parts of 
the statute known as the omnibus clauses, under which these deci- 
sions are made adverse to the interests of American manufacturers of 
iron and steel, are as follows : " Manufactures of steel, or of which 
steel shall be the component part, not otherwise provided for " ; " steel 
in any form not otherwise provided for"; " manufactures, articles, 
vessels, and wares of iron, or of which iron shall be the component 
material of chief value, not otherwise provided for"; "metals manu- 
factured not otherwise provided for," and " castings of iron not other- 
wise provided for." These give the officials of the Treasury Depart- 
ment such latitude of construction that with the constantly increas- 
ing new forms of iron and steel and other manufactures the true in- 
tent of the law becomes virtually a dead letter and without force. By 
the employment of new names for old forms of construction, and 
new designs not specially named in the statute, the articles not enu- 
merated in the law are transferred from specific to ad valorem rates, 
thus evading the duty applicable to such classes of manufacture. To 
illustrate : Hoop-iron pays a duty of 1^ cents per pound. If a piece 
of hoop-iron is cut into lengths, say eleven feet, and fastened with a 
buckle, under the Treasury rulings it is no longer hoop-iron, but 
becomes a manufacture of iron not otherwise provided for, and is 
dutiable at 35 per cent ad valorem, or about three quarters of a 
cent a pound instead of 1^ cents. It is estimated that there were 
5,500,000 bales of cotton raised last year, which would consume thirty 
thousand tons of hoop-iron. Nearly every pound of this is of foreign 
manufacture, imported here under the favorable decisions of the 



102 SPEECHES AND ADDRESSES OF WILLIAM McKINLEY. 

Treasury Department. I have never been able to understand how 
the length of the piece of hoop-iron or the riveted buckle, or any 
other contrivance, should remove this article from the special desig- 
nation of " hoop-iron," and relieve it from a like duty. It is hoop- 
iron, and nothing else. The iron or steel, of whatever length, five 
feet or twenty, should bear the same duty. A recent decision of the 
Treasury Department permits barrel-hoops to come in under the 
same clause, practically shutting out the hoop-iron manufacturer of 
the United States from the American market. 

That no manufactured article should pay any less duty than the 
duty chargeable upon the material of chief value out of which it is 
made, is the principle of the Iron and Steel Bill about which there 
has been so much criticism and discussion here and throughout the 
country ; a principle which is right and should form the basis of all 
tariff legislation and be the rule of all Treasury interpretations upon 
this subject ; a principle which every one concedes is right and thor- 
oughly just, and which in the main has been recognized in every 
tariff law since the foundation of the Government. It may be said 
that the duty is too high upon the material of chief value. If that 
be true, reduce it. But so long as that duty remains I insist that the 
intent of the law shall be sacredly preserved. It should not be the 
mere form, but the substance, of the article which should regulate 
the rate of duty. 

The gentleman from South Carolina [Mr. Aiken] takes occasion 
in his recent speech to characterize the Hoop-iron Bill, so called (which 
is now in the hands of the Ways and Means Committee), as an effort 
to rob the many for the benefit of the few. He says : 

Mr. Chairman, how insatiate is the greed of humanity ! Not content with 
their already dazzling incomes through the bounty of the Government, these iron 
men are attempting to increase, and doubtless will increase, the tariff upon that 
class of manufactured iron in which is included " cotton ties," a description of 
iron that affects the pockets of the greatest number of the poorest laborers of this 
country. These laborers are, however, all farmers, who seldom feel the helping 
hand of a paternal government. The duty on cotton ties some years ago was 70 
per cent ad valorem. For some reason, not pertinent at this moment, this duty 
was reduced to 35 per cent ad valorem, which is about three fourths of 1 cent per 
pound. The bill familiarly known as the McKinley Bill proposes to restore the 70 
per cent tax or increase the duty three fourths of one cent per pound. Certainly 
such a tax is only a mite when imposed upon an individual farmer, but what is it 
when aggregated upon a cotton crop numbering millions of bales ? Each bale 
usually has six ties around it, and they weigh ten pounds, hence the levy upon 
each bale is 7^ cents. The crop of 1882 will doubtless aggregate 6,000,000 bales, 
and hence the tax on the 36,000,000 ties that bind them will amount to the sum 



THE TARIFF COMMISSION. 103 

of $450,000. Now, sir, if this amount could be collected at our customhouses 
and be then covered into the Treasury, not a farmer in the South would complain 
of the tax. But when we know from past experience that it will all go — or, at 
least, $449,000 of it— into the coffers of less than a half dozen cotton-tie manufac- 
turers of this country, we can but denounce the proposition as an effort to rob 
the many for the benefit of the few. 

But, sir, the cotton farmer is blandly told he should not complain, for inas- 
much as he buys these ties at 2i cents per pound or less by retail, he sells them 
around his bales at the net price of cotton, 9, 10, or 11 cents per pound. This 
plausible argument does not warrant an unjust tax. But, however plausible the 
proposition, it is not true in fact. 

Let US see if it is not true in fact, and if the proposed measure 
will put into the coffers of the iron manufacturers of the United 
States the enormous amount alleged by the gentleman, or any other 
amount which in justice they ought not to have. 

I find in a Southern newspaper — the Telegraph and Messenger — 
published in Macon, Georgia, under date of February 18, 1882, a state- 
ment in reply to a criticism of the Hoop-iron Bill that appeared in 
another Southern paper called the Atlanta Constitution, which 
shows who receives the money from the cotton-tie trade, who bears 
the burdens, and who pockets the profits. It will be observed that it 
is not the iron manufacturer, not the laborer in the cotton field, but 
the thrifty planter. I quote this Southern authority as an answer to 
my friend from South Carolina : 

The Constitution does not confine itself to any injury or inequality in the 
present law, but travels outside to take up a bill, introduced by Mr. McKinley, 
to increase the duties on cotton ties, according to the Constitution, $19.19 per 
ton. The Constitution is very unfortunate in its selection of an article to demon- 
strate a species of protection as " robbery pure and simple." It is a fact well 
known to every negro who raises one bale of cotton, that the most profitable 
feature connected with the whole transaction is the difference in price that he 
buys at and the price at which he sells his cotton ties. The price of the latter 
the past season averaged about $1.75 per bundle. There are forty bundles to 
the ton, and hence the price per ton of ties to the cotton planter was $70. 
This is the long ton of 2,240 pounds. These ties are sold at the price of cot- 
ton, and at ten cents per pound they bring $224 per ton. As they cost only $70 
per ton, the net profit on every ton of ties sold by the planters of the South was 
$154. This, according to the Constitution's figures of the quantity consumed, 
shows they make a clear profit of $4,G2G,000 on their annual consumption of 
cotton ties. If this is true, there is no class of people in the country who can 
better afford to see such a rate of duty levied upon cotton ties as will enable our 
manufacturers to produce them at fair profit. 

From this it appears that the cotton planter of the South is not 
the oppressed and burdened individual described so graphically by 



104 SPEECHES AND ADDRESSES OF WILLIAM McKINLEY. 

the gentleman from South Carolina. On the contrary, he seems to 
be the monopolist, if he buys the cotton ties at 2^ cents per pound 
and sells them for cotton at 10 or 11 cents per pound, making a clean 
profit of more than $4,500,000 on the annual consumption of cotton 
ties. 

My friend exclaims, " How insatiate is the greed of humanity ! " 
I answer. How insatiate is the greed of the cotton planter, if this 
Southern authority be true ! He is quite content with his dazzling 
income, and is unwilling to share it with the manufacturers and 
laborers in the hoop-iron industry. 

My friend, in the same speech, expresses himself as quite willing 
to protect the rice planter of the South, and, I doubt not, the sugar 
grower of the same section. If the principle is worth maintaining at 
all, its application should not be sectional or awarded to any single 
industry, but all should share in its benefits and blessings, and feel 
the life-giving force of its influence. 

Under the Treasury rulings the cotton-tie trade has gone from 
the United States, from its mechanics and manufacturers, to the 
foreign manufacturer, to enrich the latter at the expense of the 
former. The cotton planter, not content with his profit on ties at 
the expense of the consumer, insists upon depriving American labor 
and capital of its just rewards and its legitimate profits. 
r While the present tariff laws need some revision, any wholesale 

( change would be unhealthy and unwise. A large part of our indus- 
/ tries has been built up under their fostering care; trade has con- 
formed to them, and has been prosperous and progressive, and no 
genuine American interest wants them overthrown or materially dis- 
turbed. If we could secure some slight changes, conceded by all as 
necessary, which would endanger no existing interests in the United 
States, and then establish a clear and unmistakable rule of construc- 
tion, to guide our customs officers in their interpretation of the law, 
any general revision of the tariff might well be left for many years to 
come. Certainty and stability are essential elements to the suc- 
cess of trade, and as long as we are doing reasonably well experiments 
should be avoided. 

Manufacturers, farmers, laboring men, indeed all the industrial 
classes in the United States, are severally and jointly interested in 
the maintenance of the present or a better tariff law which shall 
recognize in all its force the protection of American producers and 
American productions. Our first duty is to our own citizens. 

Free trade may be suitable to Great Britain and its peculiar social 



THE TARIFF COMMISSION. 105 

and political structure, but it has no place in this Kepublic, where 
classes are unknown, and where caste has long since been banished ; 
where equality is the rule ; where labor is dignified and honorable ; 
where education and improvement are the individual striving of 
every citizen, no matter what may be the accident of his birth or the 
poverty of his early surroundings. Here the mechanic of to-day is 
the manufacturer of a few years hence. Under such conditions, free 
trade can have no abiding place here. We are doing very well ; no 
other nation has done better, or makes a better showing in the world's 
balance-sheet. "We ought to be satisfied with the progress thus far 
made, and contented with our outlook for the future. We know 
what we have done and what we can do under the policy of protec- 
tion. We have had some experience with a revenue tariff, which 
neither inspires hope, nor courage, nor confidence. Our own history 
condemns the policy we oppose, and is the best vindication of the 
policy which we advocate. It needs no other. It furnished us in 
part the money to prosecute the war for the Union to a successful 
termination ; it has assisted largely in furnishing the revenue to meet 
our great public expenditures and diminish with unparalleled rapidity 
our great National debt ; it has contributed in securing to us an un- 
exampled credit ; it has developed the resources of the country and 
quickened the energies of our people ; it has made us what the Nation 
should be, independent and self-reliant ; it has made us industrious 
in peace, and secured us independence in war ; and we find ourselves 
in the beginning of the second century of the Eepublic without a 
superior in industrial arts, without an equal in commercial prosperity, 
with a sound financial system, with an overflowing Treasury, blessed 
at home and at peace with all mankind. Shall we reverse the policy 
which has rewarded us with such magnificent results? Shall we 
abandon the policy which, pursued for twenty years, has produced 
such unparalleled growth and prosperity ? 

No, no. Let us, Mr. Chairman, pass this bill. The creation of a ^ 
commission will give no alarm to business, will menace no industry | 
in the United States. Whatever of good it brings to us on the first ' 
Monday in December next we can accept ; all else we can and will 
reject. [Great applause.] 



THE TARIFF OF 1883. 

Speech in the House of Repeesentatives, Fokty-setenth 
Congress, Jantart 27, 1883. 

[From the Congressional Record.l 

The House being in Committee of the Whole for the consideration of the bill 
(H. R. 7,313) to impose duties upon foreign imports, and for other purposes, Mr. 
McKiNLEY said — 

Mr. Chairman : I shall occupy but little time in tliis debate. It 
was not my purpose until to-day to participate in the general dis- 
cussion on this bill, intending to reserve whatever I might have oc- 
casion to say until the bill should be read section by section for the 
final action of the Committee of the Whole. In what I shall say to- 
day I will not speak on the general propositions showing the benefits 
of a protective tariff and the evil results of the doctrine of free trade, 
for upon that subject at the first session of this Congress I expressed 
myself very ftilly. I have seen nothing since to change my convic- 
tions then uttered, but have witnessed much in the consideration of 
this question before the Committee on Ways and Means to confirm 
and strengthen them. 

There is a general demand, Mr. Chairman, for a revision of the 
tariff. All parties agree that the present tariff laws require revision, 
amendment, and simplification, and the majority of this House at its 
first session, conceding the necessity of a revision, created a Commis- 
sion of men of learning and business experience, and required that 
Commission to make its report to this Congress on the first day of 
the present session. All phases, then, of tariff sentiment believe in a 
revision of the tariff ; the only question upon which there is any dif- 
ference of opinion in this House or throughout the country is the 
question upon what principle that revision shall be made. On this 
side of the House it is insisted that the revision shall be made not 
upon the principle which recognizes revenue and revenue only, but 
upon the principle which shall recognize a fair and just protection to 



THE TARIFF OF 1883. 107 

American interests and to American labor ; while the minority on 
the other side of this Chamber, conceding that revision is necessary, 
insist that the revision shall be made upon the basis of a recognition 
of revenue and revenue only ; and it is there that the two parties 
practically divide in the House and throughout the country. 

The majority sentiment in this House is in favor of the former 
principle, and believes not only in a tariff for revenue but in a tariff 
for protection as well. The Committee on Ways and Means as at 
present constituted represents that dominant sentiment, and the bill 
which that Committee has brought to this House and recommends 
for its adoption recognizes fully — and I desire to make no conceal- 
ment — recognizes fully the doctrine of protection. While the bill is 
protective in its character, yet recognizing the reasonable demand of 
the country for a reduction of the revenues of the Government, the 
Committee has in its bill, wherever it could be done without injustice 
to existing interests, made reductions in the interest of a diminished 
revenue. While these reductions may not be all that every member 
of this House, or of this side of the House, could desire, still it must 
be borne in mind that in approaching the National revenues members 
of Congress, the representatives of the people, should be cautious and 
conservative. 

It must be remembered, Mr. Chairman, that it is much easier to 
reduce duties than it is to impose them ; and we ought to be very 
sure of what the necessities of this Government will be in the near 
future, and how much less of the present revenues will be required, 
before we make any very radical reduction in the revenues derived 
from the existing tariff. And in this connection it is proper I should 
say that we are justified in believing that the Senate of the United 
States will send back to this House the Internal Eevenue Bill that 
we passed at our last session — a bill which reduces internal revenue 
taxation more than $26,000,000 — with still greater reductions, which, 
together with the reductions made by the Tariff Bill, now before the 
Committee, will aggregate more than $50,000,000. 

Much comment has been indulged in concerning the reductions 
made by this bill. But if gentlemen have taken the pains to exam- 
ine the schedule of reductions, as shown by the figures of the experts 
of the Treasury Department, and which have been provided for 
members in a form convenient for reference, they will find that in 
every single schedule, from the first to the last, saving and except 
two, to which I will hereafter refer, there is a reduction of duties and 
therefore a corresponding diminution in the revenues. These two 
8 



108 SPEECHES AND ADDRESSES OF WILLIAM McKINLEY. 

exceptions are cotton and cotton goods, earthenware and glassware, 
and excepting these very considerable reductions have been made in 
every schedule of the tariff list, and the aggregate will exceed, in my 
judgment, more than 123,000,000. I believe, too, that if this bill shall 
be enacted into a law it will be found in its administration to very 
considerably increase these reductions. Another thing will be ob- 
served, Mr. Chairman, that we have followed very closely the sched- 
ules recommended by the Tariff Commission. I have no desire to 
follow gentlemen upon the other side who have discussed this ques- 
tion, in their criticism of the personnel of that Commission, nor of 
the personal views and interests of the gentlemen who constituted it. 
It is sufficient for me to say that, so far as my knowledge goes— and 
it extends to a number of those who constituted that Commission * — 
they are intelligent, conscientious, capable men, and peers of the best 
men on the floor of this House. Their work was well and, I believe, 
conscientiously performed. I say we have followed the Commission's 
schedules largely. We have made some increases, it is true, but in 
the large majority of cases where any deviation has been made from 
the suggestions of the Tariff Commission they have been in the direc- 
tion of reduction of the duties, and not of increase ; and if you will run 
over the different schedules of the bill as brought in by the Commit- 
tee and compare item for item with the report of the Tariff Commis- 
sion, you will find in a considerable number of cases that the Com- 
mittee on Ways and Means have recommended a reduction below the 
report of the Commission. It seems to me that from the standpoint 
of the other side of this Chamber any reduction should be hailed with 
approval rather than opposition. If we have honestly decreased the 
revenues twenty-two millions of dollars by tariff reductions, we have 
certainly made a step in the right direction ; and if we have not made 
all the reductions which should have been made, with experience and 
a knowledge of the necessities of this Government to be learned here- 
after, the next Congress, or some subsequent Congress, can make still 
further reduction. 



* This Commission was appointed by President Arthur, June 7, 1882, con- 
firmed by the Senate, and, as finally constituted, was as follows : John L. Hayes, 
of Massachusetts, Chairman ; Henry W. Oliver, Jr., of Pennsylvania ; Austin M. 
Garland, of Illinois ; Jacob A. Ambler, of Ohio ; Robert P. Porter, of the District 
of Columbia; John W. H. Underwood, of Georgia ; Duncan F. Kenner, of Lou- 
isiana; Alexander R. Boteler, of West Virginia ; and William H. McMahon, of 
New York. William A. Wheeler, of New York ; John S. Phelps, of Missouri ; 
Hugh McCulloch. of the District of Columbia ; and Abiel A. Low and Erastus 
Corning, of New York, were severally offered appointment, but declined. 



THE TARIFF OF 1883. 109 

Again, it will be found that the present law has been greatly sim- 
plified, classifications have been carefully made, and every safeguard 
has been raised to prevent evasions, and make undervaluations diffi- 
cult and hazardous. The Customs Court provided for will save the 
Treasury Department from its long docket of contested cases, will 
give all interested parties a speedy hearing, and secure uniformity of 
decision. No tariff bill can be made without defects and errors, and 
none can be framed which will satisfy every interest. This never has 
been the case, and never will be. This bill is no exception to the rule, 
but I beheve that with all its imperfections it will prove easy of ad- 
ministration, equitable in its ratings of duty, and as nearly just to 
American interests as possible. 

Much criticism has been indulged in because of the increase of the 
duty on cotton ties, and gentlemen who have heard this discussion 
would be led to believe, and gentlemen who have participated in it on 
the other side have presumed, that the only people in the United 
States to be consulted as to the rate of duty to be levied are the sugar 
and cotton planters of the South. They have spoken freely and com- 
plained continually of the enormity of the increase upon cotton ties 
and the iniquity of the reduction upon sugar. Cotton ties must be 
reduced, and sugar, which is the necessity of every household, must 
pay a high duty. This is the Democratic doctrine of a revenue 
tariff. 

Now, what is this cotton-tie question? For I think it is very 
much misunderstood. The cotton tie is a piece of hoop-iron, a piece 
of ordinary hoop-iron cut into a length just long enough to go round 
a bale of cotton. Under existing law hoop-iron, which is used in the 
making of cotton ties, pays a duty of one and a half cents a pound. 
The Treasury Department of this Government held that a piece of 
hoop-iron cut into lengths of the size sufficient to go around a bale 
of cotton, with a loop attached to fasten it, was not hoop-iron, but 
was a manufacture of iron not provided for, and held it to be dutiable 
at thirty-five per cent ad valorem, which was equivalent to about 
three fourths of one cent a pound. Now, all this bill proposes to do 
is to declare that hoop-iron in any length employed for any purpose 
shall pay the same duty that is levied upon the plain article known 
as hoop-iron ; and that is all there is in the outcry about an increase 
of the duty upon cotton ties which has been raised by the cotton 
planters of the South, and repeated in nearly every speech yet made 
by gentlemen on the other side. 

I would like any gentleman on the other side of the House to 



110 SPEECHES AND ADDRESSES OF WILLIAM McKINLEY. 

give me any substantial reason why a cotton tie made of hoop-iron 
should not pay the same duty as the hoop-iron itself. It costs the 
same amount of labor and requires the same material. It is hoop- 
iron ; it is nothing else; and the device of cutting that hoop into 
lengths the size to go around a bale of cotton and punching the holes 
in the end of it or putting a buckle at the end is only to avoid the 
duty imposed by law ; and now that we propose to correct that, and 
place this article in its proper relation with hoop-iron, the cry is set 
up on the other side that we are trying to destroy the cotton industry 

of the South. 

There is another thing. These gentlemen who cry about the 
insatiate greed of the manufacturers of hoop-iron, who denominate 
them robbers — these same poor cotton planters who pay four cents a 
pound for iron to bale their cotton sell the hoop-iron that goes about 
that cotton not as hoop-iron, but they sell it as cotton. They pay 
four cents a pound for the iron and they sell it to cotton manufac- 
turers as cotton at eleven cents a pound. 

Mr. Carlisle. Will the gentleman permit me to ask him a question f 

Yes, sir ; with pleasure. 

Mr. Carlisle. Does the gentleman make that statement of his own knowl- 
edge? 

I make that statement upon information and belief. And I 
invite my friend from Rhode Island [Mr. Chace], whom I see sitting 
before me, a manufacturer of cotton goods, to state what the truth is 
about it. 

Mr. Chace. There is no question about it. 
Mr. Aiken rose. 

The Chairman (Mr. McCook). Does the gentleman from Ohio [Mr. McKin- 
ley] yield to the gentleman from South Carolina ? 

Mr. Aiken. I deny the gentleman's assertion. I say, sir — 

I yield only for a question. 

Mr. Aiken. I simply want to correct the statement of the gentleman. 

The Chairman. If the gentleman from Ohio yields for that purpose, the 
gentleman from South Carolina will be heard. 

Mr. Aiken. The price of cotton is settled beyond the Atlantic. It is set by 
the English and not the Rhode Island manufacturer, and the Englishman in set- 
ting that price takes oflE the tare, amounting on a bale of cotton to twenty-two 
pounds, which is the exact weight of the bagging and ties. Thus when he re- 
ceives a bale of four hundred and twenty-two pounds, he pays for four hundred 
pounds of cotton. He buys cotton ; he buys lint, and every colored man who 
puts up a bale of cotton in the South is defrauded out of the amount of money 



THE TARIFF OF 1883. HI 

he pays for his ties. I ask the gentleman in whose interest it is he desires to 
raise the duty on the cotton tie three quarters of a cent to one and a half cents 
per pound ? Is it in the interest of the American laborer ? Is it in the interest 
of the wards of this great Nation ? [Applause.] 

I ask my friend from Rhode Island [Mr. Chace], who is a cotton 
manufacturer and who buys cotton, to answer the question. 

Mr. Chace. This is a very simple question. The cotton manufacturers of 
the United States buy about 1,200,000 bales of cotton per annum. They pay for 
it the market price, and they buy the hoops as cotton. 

Mr. Aiken. Who sets the price ? 

Mr. Chace. They pay for those hoops as cotton. You gentlemen of the 
South buy the hoops for Si cents to 4 cents a pound, and you sell them to us at 
from 10 to 11 cents a pound. That amounts to 70 cents per bale, or $840,000 per 
annum that goes into your pockets from our pockets. And yet you complain. 

Mr. King and Mr. Cook rose. 

The Chairman. The gentleman from Ohio [Mr. McKinley] is entitled to the 
floor. 

I do not care what they do in England — 

Mr. King. The gentleman is entirely mistaken, and I want to set him right. 

The gentleman from Rhode Island [Mr. Chace], who is a manu- 
facturer of and buys cotton, declares on the floor of this House that 
for the cotton tie which you buy at three and a half cents a pound 
you charge him ten to eleven cents a pound. 

^ 

Mr. Crapo rose. 

Mr. Kasson, Let us hear from Massachusetts. 

I yield to the gentleman from Massachusetts [Mr. Crapo] to bear 
his testimony. 

Mr. Crapo, The bale of cotton is put upon the scale and it is weighed, 
cotton, iron, hoops, and all ; and on that total gross weight we pay 10 or 11 cents 
a pound. 

Mr. Aiken. I ask to be permitted to say one word in reply. 

I can prove my assertion by witnesses all about me, who tell me 
they do precisely what I have said. 

Mr. Aiken and Mr. Carlisle rose. 

I do not yield for further interruptions. The gentlemen in the 
galleries who applauded my friend from South Carolina are not 
interested in American manufacturers and American labor. 

Mr. King. Will the gentleman allow me a word? 

There is a lobby here from the other side wanting to get legisla- 
tion from the Democratic side of this House to enhance English 



112 SPEECHES AND ADDRESSES OP WILLIAM McKINLEY. 

manufacturing, enrich the coffers of English lords, destroy American 

industries, and degrade American labor. 

Mr. King rose. 

The Chairman. Does the gentleman from Ohio yield ? 

I decline to yield. I have said so already, and I trust I am under- 
stood. This debate must be closed at five o'clock. The other side 
have had more hours of this general discussion than we have had on 
our side. They should be content. 

Mr. King. I do not want false statements to go uncontradicted. 

They are not false statements ; but when I stated a fact about 
cotton ties I was not making any complaint against the cotton 
planters of the South. I do not want to interfere with their business 
regulations or their profits. I do not care how much they get for 
the hoop-iron that goes around their cotton bales. But when they 
come here and call American manufacturers robbers because they 
want a cotton tie to pay the same duty as hoop-iron out of which it 
is made, it comes with a poor grace from men who buy iron from 
robbers of the North at four cents a pound and sell it to the New 
England factories as cotton for eleven. [Applause.] Yes, to the 
same robbers of the North. And that is all there is in this cotton- 
tie proposition. 

It is to make hoop-iron of any length, under any name, in any 
disguise, pay the same duty that the hoop-iron you buy in your stores 
at home, which is imported, is now required to pay. The proposition 
is just, logical, and unanswerable, and should be maintained by this 
House. 

Ah, but, they say, you have increased the duty on earthenware ! 
Every speech that has been made on the other side of the House has 
cried out against the increase of duty on the earthen and glass ware 
used in the United States. Now, let us look into that matter. We 
admit there has been an increase ; nobody denies that. But it will 
be found, upon investigation, that the increase has been grossly ex- 
aggerated by gentlemen on the other side of the House. 

What is the increase ? The present duty on plain white granite 
ware and on painted, decorated, and printed ware is forty per cent 
ad valorem. The proposed duty upon plain white granite ware is 
fifty-five per cent ad valorem, and on plain white granite ware painted 
or decorated sixty-five per cent ad valorem. That looks upon its face 
like a great increase, in the one case fifteen per cent, and in the other 
case twenty-five per cent ; but it will be found upon examination that 
the increase is not real. 



THE TARIFF OF 1883. 113 

Let me show you, for you want the facts and only the facts. In 
the bill which is brought to this House by the Committee on Ways 
and Means there is a proposition to repeal what is denominated in 
Heyl's Digest, section 516. Now, this bill proposes to repeal that 
section. Let me read it : 

In determining the dutiable value of merchandise hereafter imported, there 
shall be added to the cost, or to the actual wholesale price or general market value 
at the time of exportation in the principal market of the country from whence the 
same has been imported into the United States — 

Now here are the items which are dutiable under that section — 

the cost of transportation, shipment and transshipment, with all the expenses in- 
cluded, from the place of growth, production, or manufacture, whether by land or 
water, to the vessel in which shipment is made to the United States ; the value of 
the sack, box, or covering of any kind in which such merchandise is contained ; 
commission at the usual rates, but in no case less than two and a half per cent ; 
and brokerage, export duty, and all other actual or usual charges for putting up, 
preparing, and packing for transportation or shipment. 

Under our bill that section is to be repealed. There is to be no 
duty on commissions ; there is to be no duty on inland charges ; there 
are to be no dutiable charges whatever. The duty is to be assessed 
upon the actual cost of the merchandise. 

Now, what difference does that make in the cost of a crate of 
crockery ware ? Let me call attention to an actual invoice which I 
have before me. I will take first an actual invoice of four average 
crates of the common white ware used by the people of this country 
generally. 

Of this grade of ware four crates cost in England 8117.85, or, 
with the discounts that are given to the American buyer, the four 
crates will cost $79.77. The common earthenware which the ma- 
jority of the people of this country use on their tables will cost on 
the average in England $19.94 per crate. That is the cost in England 
to the American importer. 

Now, add to that the various items mentioned in the section which 
I have just read. The package costs $3.97 ; inland freight and charges, 
$2.04 ; marine insurance, consul fees, and certificates, 54 cents ; mak- 
ing a total of 86.73. 

Now, add to that the commission of two and a half per cent 
provided in this section which we propose to repeal, and we will have 
60 cents more, making the total duty and the cost of the goods in- 
cluding charges amount to $27.33 per crate. Now, that is the whole 
amount which is dutiable under the existing law. 



114 SPEECHES AND ADDRESSES OP WILLIAM McKINLEY. 

The present duty is forty per cent, and forty per cent of $27.33 is 
$10.93. That is the duty which the importer would pay under the 
present law upon a crate of common earthenware. 

What will he pay under the proposed law ? The duty under the 
proposed law is fifty-five per cent. On what? On the actual cost of 
the goods in England. What is that? It is $19.94; and fifty-five 
per cent of $19.94 is $10.97. So that the duty under the proposed 
law will be $10.97, while under the present law it is $10.93. 

Now, in the light of that actual invoice, what becomes of the howl 
from that side of the House about the extravagant duties upon the 
plates of the poor people of this country ? 

Does anybody in this House know what one hundred and twenty- 
five pieces of cream-colored crockery ware, such as is used by the 
masses in this country, are sold at by retail now ? A dinner-set of 
one hundred and twenty-five pieces costs the consumer the enormous 
sum of $10. And take the iron-stone china, a still higher grade, and 
it will cost the consumer for the same number of pieces $12.50 to $14. 
Before we had a forty-per-cent duty in the United States, before 
our pottery manufactories had started, the consumers of the United 
States were paying to the English potters at Staffordshire, England, 
fifty per cent more than they are paying to-day. The result of the 
competition by American potters has brought down the price of com- 
mon crockery ware to the low rate at which we find it to-day. It 
never was so cheap to the consumer as now. 

Now, I appeal to this side of the House, and to the protectionists 
of the other side, to stand by this young industry in the United 
States. 

It is not twenty years old to-day. We practically manufactured no 
white ware in this country until 1862 and 1863, and the only way 
that our potteries were then established was by the aid of the gold 
premium before resumption, which added a large incidental protec- 
tion to that interest. It can not continue unless the duty asked for 
by this bill is granted. 

I admit that on the higher class of goods, those that are painted, 
decorated, or printed, and which the rich and luxurious use, the pro- 
posed duty in the bill is an increase over existing rates. But that in- 
crease is necessary. We are developing the art industry in the United 
States, and it must be fostered and nourished. Art schools are spring- 
ing up all over the country. 

AVe have one in Cincinnati that decorates nothing but plain 
earthenware. The gentleman from Pennsylvania, the distinguished 



THE TARIFF OF 1883, 115 

Chairman of the Committee on Ways and Means, has a notable one 
in his own city. It is in the interest of art, it is in the interest of the 
women and the girls who are pursuing this art for a livelihood, that I 
appeal to this House to stand by the duty proposed in this bill. The 
bill makes painted and decorated earthenware pay the same duty as 
decorated china ware, and this is right. It costs just as much of 
labor, skill, and materials to decorate earthenware as china ware, and 
it is often very difficult to detect the difference between the one and 
the other. 

It is surprising the amount of labor required and the number of 
hands through which this ware must pass before completion. 

In the growth of a single plate there are twenty-one processes ; 
each of these is a distinct department, operated by different workmen, 
and in each it has several handlings ; and this regular, every-day size, 
good quality plate is sold for five cents, or sixty cents per dozen. The 
imperfect ones, of which there are about one half, are sold at a large 
reduction from this price. 

Mr. Chairman, I wish to show from a paper published in Stafford- 
shire, the city of the great potteries of England, how they are seeking 
to take the American market, and how the rivalry is ruinous to the 
industries of the United States. I read now from the arbitration 
between the workmen and the potters of Staffordshire, concerning 
a request of the workmen for increased wages. The manufacturers 
before the arbitration were showing why they could not pay the de- 
manded rates. Let me read an extract or two. This is from Mr. 
Akerill, secretary of the employers : 

The potting trade was divided into several kinds — American trade, general 
foreign and colonial trade, and continental and home trades. In the evidence 
given by the employers in 1879 it was stated that there was very small prospect 
of their being able to get an advance in selling prices in the American trade. 
Owing to the increased price in coal, borax, and other materials, those engaged in 
that market endeavored in the spring of this year to obtain the moderate advance 
of five per cent on selling prices on this account, and also because their business 
was unremunerative ; but after a struggle of some months' duration they failed 
in their efforts, as the supply of goods was more than equal to the demand, and 
they found that American manufacturers were taking their trade, as they con- 
tinued to sell at old prices, while their English competitors were asking for an 
advance. The position of the English manufacturers was worse now than it was 
when the award of 8^ per cent was made in their favor, as they had had to give 
more for coal, borax, and oxide of cobalt, with the prospect also of being unable 
to get an advance in selling prices. In the employers' evidence on the last occa- 
sion it was said that they had no desire to reduce wages, except it was mutually 
advantageous ; and they contended that such had been the result, for it had as- 



116 SPEECHES AND ADDRESSES OF WILLIAM McKINLEY. 

sisted the master to find more work, and for the workman to earn more wages. 
They further contended that to the majority of workmen the reduction of 8^ 
per cent had not been a serious loss, if any ; for by increased diligence they 
had been enabled to earn fair wages, if not quite equal in amount to what they 
did prior to the award ; and manufacturers engaged in the American trade 
thought it would be most unwise at the present time to disturb the condi- 
tions of labor, more especially as many of the manufacturers were selling goods 
to-day at lower prices than they were doing when the award was given by Lord 
Hatherton. 

If the business of the country and of the world generally should improve dur- 
ing the next year, and the manufacturers at Martinmas next find themselves able 
to obtain better prices than they could now do, they would not hesitate to let the 
men share in that advance, without troubling an umpire to decide the question. 
But to force up labor, and, in consequence, the selling prices of goods just now, 
could not but have a disastrous result for both masters and men. In this, as in 
the American trade, the foreigners were their rivals, and they only waited for the 
labor market to be forced up here to take again the orders which should come to 
this district. 

That is to say, on the other side they have reduced the wages of 
their laboring people in order to capture the American market ; and 
they do not want to increase wages, because, if they do, our American 
potteries will have a portion of our own market. We have only forty 
per cent of it to-day ; sixty per cent of the American market, as to 
pottery, goes to England, while we ought to control the whole of it, 
and will with proper protection, and to the ultimate benefit of the 
consumer. 

Then Mr. John Maddock, one of the most extensive English 
manufacturers of pottery, says that he has a brother over in New 
York watching the American trade, and if they can get a reduction 
of the duties on pottery, then they will be able to capture and hold 
the American market. I am told — indeed, I know — that this brother 
has been in the city of "Washington ; and I have no doubt he is in 
some of these galleries to-day ; and I doubt not that a speech to be 
made hereafter — not by my friend from Illinois [Mr. Morrison], who 
stands before me, for he said in his speech yesterday that he conceded 
on crockery there was about seventeen and one half per cent growing 
out of these dutiable charges for commissions and inland transporta- 
tion — but there will be inspired for somebody else a speech to be made 
to show why in the interest of American consumers, not in the interest 
of English potters (of course), this duty should be reduced. Hear what 
Mr. Maddock says : 

Mr. John Maddock was the first witness called on behalf of the manufactur- 
ers, and was examined by Mr. E. Powell. He said he was a manufacturer of 



THE TARIFF OF 1883. 117 

-white granite, engaged in the American trade. In his opinion the trade at the 
present time was better as regarded the men and worse as regarded prices ; that 
was to say, that in consequence of his having more work to do the men were kept 
more fully employed than they were a year ago, while the prices obtained for the 
ware were unremunerative. It was a fact that he was selling these goods now, in 
order to meet American competition, at a less price than he was doing at this 
time last year, and he thought it was the duty of manufacturers to continue sell- 
ing their goods at the present price in order to keep the trade. At the beginning 
of last year he was a member of a committee of white granite manufacturers, 
and at a meeting called to consider the position of the trade it was resolved, in 
consequence of certain increases in the cost of production, to make an effort to 
increase the selling price of goods. The manufacturers then resolved to reduce 
their discounts 2^ per cent. As one of that committee he had endeavored to 
carry out that resolve, but failed to accomplish his object. Indeed, not only did 
he fail in reducing the discount to the amount stated, but he was actually com- 
pelled to lengthen the discount a further 2^ per cent. He had two manufactories 
engaged in this particular trade, and from the fact that he had a brother living 
in New York and was consequently kept familiar with the trade of that country, 
he concluded that they would feel more and more the competition they were sub- 
jected to. They had been looking toward the probability of having a President 
in favor of free trade, but as the result of the recent election they were doomed to 
disappointment, though they might eventually obtain some relief from the pres- 
ent heavy tariff. 

How the English manufacturer is looking to the Democratic party 
for help, and how he sighs for a free-trade President ! They want to 
keep our trade for the better prices which are to come with a reduc- 
tion of duty. They are selling at a loss, upon their own confession, 
to keep the trade for future profits. Our friends on the other side of 
the House say that reduced duty means reduced cost to the consumer. 
This is not the opinion of their English allies. Reduction of duty 
means their profit and a corresponding injury to our consumers. 

Mr. Chairman, I must hasten on. I believe that it is the duty of 
American Congressmen to legislate for American citizens, and not 
for foreign manufacturers. Let us take care of our own interests, and 
look to the well-being of our own citizens first. [Applause.] Let 
me show you how England is watching the growth of free-trade senti- 
ment in the United States. I read in the Pottery Gazette, published 
in England, in its number of May 7, 1882, that they have sent a 
special agent over here to look into our industries. That gentleman 
says that while in New York he attended the meeting of a free-trade 
league ; and I wish gentlemen to hear what he says about it. He 
says: 

I was informed by an importer [of course, by an importer] that a large public 
meeting was to be held in Chickering Hall to " consider the necessity of an imrae- 



118 SPEECHES AND ADDRESSES OP WILLIAM McKINLEY. 

diate reform in the unjust, unequal, and iniquitous system of taxation called a 
protective tarifE." This meeting was called by the New York Free Trade Club. 

I attended this meeting, and since doing so my hopes of the eventual aboli- 
tion of the tariffs on raw materials and the considerably reducing of the duties 
on manufactured goods have been increased tenfold. The trouble which we had 
in England some thirty-five years ago is now commencing in real earnest here. 
The work of the Cobden and Bright Corn Law League is repeating itself through- 
out the States. It would be impossible in England to have found a more intelli- 
gent and enthusiastic audience, and composed exactly of the class most interested 
in this question — manufacturers, importers, and the working-class consumers. 
A Senator from North Carolina was present, and gave one of the best speeches on 
the subject that it was ever my pleasure to listen to. The Club is disseminating 
literature, organizing lectures, and at the next Presidential election this can not 
fail to be felt. Some argue that the tariff benefits the manufacturers but is 
prejudicial to the working classes ; others argue that the working classes are alone 
benefited, and some again that it benefits both equally. It is not for us now to 
discuss who are most benefited. The vital part of the question lies far above that. 
The consumers are vastly in the majority, and it is unjust to tax the many for 
the benefit of the few. 

The processes of educating the working classes on the subject itself are more 
difficult than they were in England. The immensity of the country and the in- 
difference of the working classes to politics are serious drawbacks in the way, 
but nevertheless the work is rapidly advancing, and these trades, in conjunction 
with other leading industries in England, will at no very distant date see, I be- 
lieve, a change. The question is one of such great importance to English manu- 
facturers that it is impossible for us to give too much attention to it, and we 
shall closely watch the progress of events and the work of the New York Free 
Trade Club to which subscriptions are pouring in for providing the sinews of war. 

*' The sinews of war," subscriptions of money, flowing in to defeat 
the doctrine of protection in the United States, to overturn the 
American system founded by that great Whig leader, Henry Clay ! 
But more : 

It will be for some years impossible for American manufacturers to produce 
all that is required by her 50,000,000 people, and the market lying so near us and 
being an offshoot of our own people, and speaking our own language, is for these 
reasons a market that must be closely watched. 

I may mention incidentally, as an evidence of the warm feel- 
ing toward England, that the British national anthem was played 
on the large organ after the first leading speech was concluded. 
[Laughter and applause.] And if we could only have had the 
Marine Band of this city here yesterday upon the conclusion of the 
speeches of my honored friends from Virginia and Texas [Messrs. 
Tucker and Mills], and had them play the " British national anthem," 
how beautifully appropriate such concluding service would have been ! 
[Laughter and applause.] But, in the absence of that, there were 



THE TARIFF OF 1883. 119 

ripples of applause from every free trader on that side of the House, 
and murmurs of approbation from the agents of every importer who 
held places in the galleries of this House. 

Mr. Chairman, let me show, briefly, the condition of the work- 
ingmen in some of the districts of England, which the other side of 
this House seems willing to transfer here. Hear me while I read the 
vivid description of the degradation of English labor furnished by 
Mr. Porter, correspondent of the New York Tribune, which appeared 
in that great paper last Monday. He tells how women and children 
work from early morn until late at night in the iron furnaces and 
foundries in the Black District, and the compensation they receive : 

The most startling account of the degradation of a branch of English labor 
comes from the Back country, a region which I shall not reach for three or four 
weeks. The facts, however, which I shall present in advance of going there are 
from the most trustworthy source, and were actually witnessed a few days ago. 
It takes one back to the days before Parliamentary interference compelled the 
white slave drivers of the manufacturing districts of England to stop using 
women as beasts of burden in the coalpits of this same region. I had expected 
to find poverty and distress and squalid misery in these great centers of industry, 
for we have that at home, in a land where the laborer is not obliged to work for 
ten or twelve shillings a week. I did not expect to read such a recital of man's 
greed as one that has just been made public as " a simple narrative of truth" from 
the Black Country. 

It appears that to-day, in spite of " factory act " and " school board," thousands 
of females, old and young, mothers and daughters, with their little children by 
their sides, toil by day and by night, in a locality about seven miles from the 
great free-trade city of Birmingham — the home of Bright and Chamberlain. In 
this gloomy district about 24,000 people are engaged in making nails and rivets. 
If they were men and boys the lowness of the wages would not seem so bad. But 
this account brings out the fact that 16,000 females are engaged day after day in 
the occupation. They are not all mature women ; daughters work by the side of 
mothers — daughters who, in their tender years, ought to be at home, if they have 
any home, or in bed, instead of working their weary arms in shaping, in the still, 
small hours of the morning, molten iron into the form of nails. Here is the pic- 
ture drawn by a writer in the London Standard, who actually witnessed it, two or 
three nights ago : 

" In the middle of the shed which adjoins a squalid-looking house there is a 
whole family at work in the production of these nails — father, mother, sons, and 
daughters— daughters, too, very young in years, but with that sad look of prema- 
ture age which is always to be noticed in the faces of child-workers. The gayety 
of youth, its freshness and its gentleness, seem to be crushed out of them. In the 
center of the shed, with its raftered ceiling — a bleak and wretched building, 
through the walls of which the wind readily finds its way — there is a ' hearth,' 
fed by ' glcdcs ' or breezes. Probably there is a girl or woman blowing at the bel- 
lows, while the strips of iron from which the nails are made become molten. 

" In one of these forges was a mother and several children. The mother was 



120 SPEECHES AND ADDRESSES OF WILLIAM McKINLEY. 

a woman probably forty years of age ; her youngest daughter, a flaxen-haired 
girl with a sweet and winsome face, was certainly not more than twelve years of 
age. By the side of the hearth there was what is technically called the " Oliver " 
a barrel-like construction, on the top of which is fixed the stamp of the particu- 
lar pattern and size of the nail required to be made. The workmen and work- 
women, by means of a wooden treadle— an industrial tread mill it ought more 
strictly to be called— shoot out the nails from the slot in which they are fixed. 
They have previously hammered the top of the incandescent metal with mascu- 
line firmness so as to form the head of the nail." 

So inured do these poor women and girls become to this work that it is said 
they seem to work with more vigor than the men— very often, indeed, they sup- 
port their husbands and their fathers, who may have fallen into drunken habits. 
But the first question that will naturally be asked by those who demand cheap 
goods, even at this fearful degradation of woman, is, How much can they earn? 
Again I quote from the man who has witnessed the spectacle : 

" The remuneration they receive is incredibly small. It is no unusual thing — 
on the contrary, it is quite the usual custom— for a family of three or four per- 
sons, after working something like fourteen hours a day, to earn £1 ($5) in a week. 
But out of this money there has to be deducted Is. 3d. for carriage to convey the 
nails to the 'gaffers,' as they are termed in the district; then there is allowance 
to be made for fuel and the repairing of machinery, which reduces the £1 to 
about IGs. dd. ($4.18) for three people who have commenced to work every morn- 
ing at half past seven or eight, and who have worked on through all the weary 
day, with no substantial food, until late at night." 
' These poor laborers rarely or never taste meat from one week's end to the 

other. In the expressive but simple language of one workwoman, this is how 
they fare : " When the bread comes hot from the bakehouse oven on Saturday 
we eat it like ravenous wolves." The scenes of misery — misery so deep and dread- 
ful that the most graphic pen can only faintly convey its depth of sorrow— that 
are witnessed in this region would hardly be believed in the United States ; and 
were I not quoting from English authority, of tlie highest character, I should be 
fearful of laying myself open to the charge of prejudice, so frequently made 
' against those who would rather elevate than degrade labor, and who do not want 
cheapness at such a fearful cost. Women, it is said (and in a few weeks I shall 
go through this entire region and verify the words of my informants), within a 
few days of their confinement, have been to work in the agony of exhaustion, in 
order to earn a few pence at the " hearth "—not the " hearth " of home, which Eng- 
land, especially at this season of the year, so fondly boasts of, but the " hearth " of 
the forge. They have been known to return to work in a day or two after childbirth, 
" emaciated in constitution, weak and weary for the want of simple nourishment." 
Their children, ragged and ill-fed, have had to lead miserable and wretched lives, 
with no hope before them but a life of wickedness and vice. What more dismal 
picture can be drawn than the following description of the cheerless homes of 
these poor creatures ? 

" The houses, if they deserve to be dignified with the word, are wretched in 
construction ; in many instances they are more like hovels than human dwell- 
ing places ; they seem to be devoid of all those ordinary conveniences which are 
to be seen in houses occupied by a better class of workpeople; they certainly 



THE TARIFF OF 1883. 121 

shelter, and that is all, the toilers who for a few hours rest within their rickety 
walls." 

This picture needs no comment or elaboration. Happily it has no 
counterpart in American civilization, and its introduction here would 
be abhorrent and un-American. 

The laboring men of this country understand this question and 
its relation to their wages. I beg to read from one of the petitions 
from my district signed by the men engaged in the mills, mines, fac- 
tories, and furnaces, and I have many of them ; and the Eecord daily 
shows like petitions from all sections of the country. They want no 
free trade ; they want no revenue reform which means reduced wages, 
and they declare it with no uncertain sound : 

To the Senate and House of Representatives of the United States of America 

in Congress assembled : 

The petition of the undersigned workingmen, employes of the Ohio Iron and 
Steel Company at LowcUville, Ohio, respectfully sets forth the following facts: 

In common with other workingmen they have been prepared to acquiesce in 
the schedules of duties on foreign products recommended by the Tariff Commis- 
sion, although not approving of all of the provisions of the schedules, their 
principal reason for accepting the schedules arising from a strong desire to see 
the tariff question settled upon a basis that would offer some hope of perma- 
nence, and that would also offer some hope of stability to the industries of the 
country. 

They liave, however, viewed with alarm the effects upon general business of 
the mere proposition of the Commission to reduce duties, and of the widespread 
apprehension that Congress may go even further in the work of reduction than 
the Commission has recommended, and they point to the recent stoppage of mills 
and factories and workshops, to the enforced idleness of many workingmen, to 
the shrinkage in values and the decline in prices, to the largely increased number 
of financial failures, to the tendency toward lower wages for labor, to the hesita- 
tion of capital to engage in new enterprises, and to the withholding of orders for 
supplies by railroad companies and other great corporations, as conclusive proofs 
of the depressed condition of many of our leading industries and of the great 
shock which our whole industrial system has experienced. 

They believe that this serious and threatening condition of our industrial in- 
terests can only be changed, and confidence and prosperity be restored to the 
country, by the firm refusal of Congress at its present session to do anything 
that will tend to increase the importation of foreign goods, or that will make 
competition between the manufacturers of this country and of otlier countries for 
the supply of our markets so severe that the wages of American workingmen must 
be still further and permanently reduced. 

Duties, therefore, should not be seriously decreased on any articles of iron or 
steel, and they should be increased on tin plates, steel wire rods, steel blooms, 
pig iron, cotton ties, and all " nonenumerated " articles. To decrease the duties 
on many iron and steel products which could be named could only result in an 



122 SPEECHES AND ADDRESSES OP WILLIAM McKINLEY. 

increase of importations and a consequent increase of revenue, or else in a great 
reduction of wages, to be followed by general distress and discontent. 

The workinginen, whose names are appended, therefore pray that Congress 
will adopt no lower rates of duties on any foreign manufactured products than 
are recommended by the Tariff Commission ; and they further pray that Senators 
and Representatives in this crisis of our manufacturing industries, which have 
done so much to develop the resources of the country and to increase and extend 
its prosperity, will take counsel of the experience of the past, which tells a warn- 
ing story of the effects upon American industries of a too-ready acceptance of 
the economic views of our foreign rivals. 

Shall their appeals go unheeded ? This side answers N"o, thrice 
NO. The fine-spun theories of the free traders weigh lightly with me 
against the hard facts gained by these men in the school of experi- 
ence. Many of them know from realization the hardships which re- 
sult to labor from free trade, and their voice has been steadily against 
its inauguration here. 
' Mr. Chairman, we can have the Democratic doctrine of free trade 
- whenever the Democratic party can make slaves of our laboring men, 
but not until then. [Applause on the Republican side. J Why, if 
labor was degraded on this side the Atlantic like the other, we might 
compete with the best manufactories of the world in any market. No 
' lover of his race, no friend of humanity, wants reduced wages. I do 
; not speak for capital. Capital can take care of itself. Rob it of its 
profits in any of the so-called protected industries, and it will seek 
other avenues of investment and profit. I speak for the workingmen 
of my district, the workingmen of Ohio, and of the country. 

Mr. Springer. They did not speak for you very largely at the last elec- 
tion. 

Ah, my friend, my fidelity to my constituents is not measured by 
the support they give me! [Great applause.] I have convictions 
upon this subject which I would not surrender or refrain from advo- 
cating if 10,000 majority had been entered against me last October 
[renewed applause] ; and if that is the standard of political morality 
and conviction and fidelity to duty which is practiced by the gentle- 
man from Illinois, I trust that the next House Avill not do, what I 
know they will not do, make him Speaker of the House. [Laughter 
and applause.] And I trust another thing, that that general remark, 
interjected here, coming from a man who has to sit in the next 
House, does not mean that he has already prejudged my case which 
is to come before him as a judge. 

Mr. Springer. Your constituents have done that for you. 



THE TARIFF OF 1883. 123 

For if he has, then he would be subject to be taken from the panel 
of jurors, because he had already expressed an opinion in the case 
which was to be tried before him. [Applause.] 

No interest in this country is asking for a revenue tariff. Not a 
single petition has come to us for a tariff bill to be based upon Demo- 
cratic principles. The farmers, for whose special interests the Demo- 
cratic party assumes to speak, have not asked for it. They want to 
produce, and want the laboring men in the factories to consume their 
products and pay a good price for them. They have no desire to 
break down manufacturing, and transfer the vast army of men who 
are consumers and who work in the shops to the ranks of producers, 
to become competitors with them. They want a market, and pro- 
tection enables them to have it. The wool grower wants no free 
trade or revenue tariff. He wants and should have full and adequate 
protection with all other interests. All interests want a settlement 
of this question, and it would be an irreparable wrong to permit this 
Congress to adjourn without passing a tariff bill recognizing fully 
the principles I have announced. Agitation is paralyzing business, 
creating uncertainty and distrust of the future, and the highest states- 
manship will be illustrated and enforced by a prompt and speedy 
disposition of this whole question. 

Now, Mr. Chairman, I close, not with my own words, but the 
words of one whose memory we revere ; with the last words that were 
ever uttered on the floor of this House on a tariff bill and in a tariff 
discussion by the lamented Garfield, whose successor [Mr. Taylor] 
sits on my left. Standing there where the gentleman from Kansas 
[Mr. Haskell] sits to-day, that magnificent man closed his great speech 
on the Wood tariff debate with these patriotic words, which sounded 
out through this chamber and thrilled us all : 

For the present the world is divided into separate nationalities, and that Di- 
vine command still applies : " He that provideth not for his own household has 
denied the faith and is worse than an infidel." And until that era arrives de- 
scribed by the gentleman from Virginia, patriotism must supply the place of uni- 
versal brotherhood. For the present Gortchakoff can do more good for the 
world by taking care of Russia. The great Bismarck can accomplish more for 
his era by being, as he is, a German to the core and promoting the welfare of the 
German Empire. Let Beaconsfield take care of England ; let MacMahon take 
care of France ; and let Americans devote themselves to the welfare of America. 
When each does his part for his own nation to promote prosperity, justice, and 
peace, all will have done more for the world than if all had attempted to be cos- 
mopolitans rather than patriots. [Loud and prolonged applause.] 



JAMES A. GARFIELD. 

Address accepting the Statue of Garfield, presented by 
THE State of Ohio, in the House of Eepresentatives, 
Forty-Ninth Congress, January 19, 188G. 

[Frovt the Congressional Record.] 

Mr, Speaker : Complying with an act of Congress passed July, 
1864, inviting each of the States of the Union to present to National 
Statuary Hall the statues of two of its deceased citizens " illustrious 
for their heroic renown, or distinguished by civic or military serv- 
ices " worthy of National commemoration, Ohio brings her first con- 
tribution in the marble statue of James Abram Garfield. There 
were other citizens of Ohio earlier associated with the history and 
progress of the State and illustrious in the Nation's annals who 
might have been fitly chosen for this exalted honor. Governors, 
United States Senators, members of the supreme judiciary of the 
Nation, closely identified with the growth and greatness of the State, 
who fill a large space in their country's history; soldiers of high 
achievement in the earlier and later wars of the Eepublic ; Cabinet 
Ministers, trusted associates of the martyred Lincoln, w^ho had de- 
veloped matchless qualities and accomplished masterly results in the 
Nation's supreme crisis ; but from the roll of illustrious names the 
unanimous voice of Ohio called the youngest and latest of her historic 
dead, the scholar, the soldier, the National Eepresentative, the United 
States Senator-elect, the President of the people, the upright citizen, 
and the designation is everywhere received with approval and acclaim. 

By the action of the authorities of the State he loved so well and 
served so long, and now, by the action of the National Congress in 
which he was so long a conspicuous figure, he keeps company to-day 
with " the immortal circle " in the old Hall of Eepresentatives, which 
he was wont to call the " Third House," where his strong features 
and majestic form, represented in marble, will attract the homage of 



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aj* »y HBMa jijRiTirrjt 




D- Appletoa & Cc 



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JAMES A. GARFIELD. 125 

the present and succeeding generations, as in life his great character 
and commanding qualities earned the admiration of the citizens of 
his own State and the Nation at large, while the lessons of his life 
and the teachings of his broad mind will be cherished and remem- 
bered when marble and statues have crumbled to decay. 

James A. Garfield was born on the 19th day of November, 1831, 
in Orange, Cuyahoga County, Ohio, and died at Elberon, in the 
State of New Jersey, on the 19th day of September, 1881. His boy- 
hood and youth differed little from others of his own time. His 
parents were very poor. He worked from an early age, like most 
boys of that period. He was neither ashamed nor afraid of manual 
labor, and engaged in it resolutely for the means to maintain and 
educate himself. He entered Williams College, in the State of Massa- 
chusetts, in 1854, and graduated with honor two years later, when he 
assumed charge of Hiram College, in his own State. 

In 1859 he was elected to the Senate of Ohio, being its youngest 
member. Strong men were his associates in that body, men who 
have since held high stations in the public service. Some of them 
were his colleagues here. In this, his first political office, he displayed 
a high order of ability, and developed some of the great qualities 
which afterward distinguished his illustrious career. 

In August, 18C1, he entered the Union Army, and in September 
following was commissioned Colonel of the Forty-second Ohio Infan- 
try Volunteers. He was promoted successively Brigadier and Major- 
General of the United States Volunteers, and while yet in the Army 
was elected to Congress, remaining in the field more than a year after 
his election, and resigning only in time to take his seat in the House, 
December 7, 1863. His military service secured him his first Na- 
tional prominence. He showed himself competent to command in 
the field, although without previous training. He could plan battles 
and fight them successfully. As an officer he was exceptionally pop- 
ular, beloved by his men, many of whom were his former students, 
respected and honored by his superiors in rank, and his martial qual- 
ities and gallant behavior were more than once commended in general 
orders and rewarded by the Government with well-merited promotion. 

He was brave and sagacious. He filled every post with intelligence 
and fidelity, and directed the movement of troops with judgment and 
skill. Distinguished as was his military career, which in itself would 
have given him a proud place in history, his most enduring fame, his 
highest renown, was earned in this House as a representative of the 
people. Here his marvelous qualities were brought into full activity. 



126 SPEECHES AND ADDRESSES OF WILLIAM McKINLEY. 

here he grew with gradual but ever-increasing strength, here he won 
his richest laurels, here was the scene and center of his greatest glory. 
Here he was leader and master, not by combination or scheming, not 
by chicane or caucus, but by the force of his cultivated mind, his 
keen and farseeing judgment, his unanswerable logic, his strength 
and power of speech, his thorough comprehension of the subjects of 
legislation. Always strong, he was strongest on his feet, addressing 
the House, or, from the rostrum, the assembled people. Who of us 
having heard him here or elsewhere, speaking upon a question of 
great National concern, can forget the might and majesty, the force 
and directness, the grace and beauty of his utterances. He was al- 
ways just to his adversary, an open and manly opponent, and free 
from invective. He convinced the judgment with his searching logic, 
while he swayed his listeners with brilliant periods and glowing elo- 
quence. He was always an educator of the people. His thoughts 
were fresh, vigorous, and instructive. 

In running over his public service here, covering a period of nearly 
eighteen years, crowding page after page of the Congressional Record, 
I have sought to settle in my own mind the question or questions in 
which he was greatest, and with which his name will be best remem- 
bered. I confess it is no easy task. He was not a specialist m states- 
manship. The subjects which he debated covered all the leading 
issues of the parties and the political policies of his time. He limited 
himself to no one topic and was confined to no single range of Na- 
tional legislation. His thoroughness upon every question he touched 
was marked and habitual. The Congressional debates show hira 
prominent in discussion of the military affairs of the Government m 
time of war, when mighty armies were to be mustered and the means 
provided for their maintenance ; the emancipation of the slave, and 
the problem of his future ; the reconstruction of the seceded States ; 
the amendments to the Constitution giving suffrage to the newly en- 
franchised race ; the tariff ; refunding of the National debt ; general 
education ; the resumption of specie payment ; silver coinage ; the 
civil service ; the independence of the several branches of the Fed- 
eral Government. 

He brought to this wide range of subjects vast learning and com- 
prehensive judgment. He enlightened and strengthened every cause 
he advocated. Great in dealing with them all, dull and common- 
place in none, but to me he was the strongest, broadest, and bravest 
when he spoke for honest money, the fulfillment of the Nation s 
promises, the resumption of specie payments, and the maintenance of 



JAMES A. GARFIELD. 127 

the public faith. He contributed his share, in full measure, to secure 
National honesty and preserve inviolate our National honor. None 
did more, few, if any, so much, to bring the Government back to a 
sound, stable, and constitutional money. He was a very giant in 
those memorable struggles, and it required upon his part the exercise 
of the highest courage. A considerable element of his party was 
against him, notably in his own State and some parts of his Congres- 
sional district. The mad passion of inflation and irredeemable cur- 
rency was sweeping through the West, with the greatest fury in his 
own State. He was assailed for his convictions, and was threatened 
with defeat. He was the special target for the hate and prejudice of 
those who stood against the honest fulfillment of National obligations. 
In a letter to a friend on New Year's eve, 1867-'68, he wrote : 

I have just returned from a tedious trip to Ashtabula, where I made a two- 
hours' speech upon finance, and when I came home, came through a storm of 
paper-money denunciation in Cleveland, only to find on my arrival here a sixteen- 
page letter, full of alarm and prophecy of my political ruin for my opinions on the 
currency. 

To the same friend he wrote in 1878 : 

On the whole it is probable I will stand again for the House. I am not sure, 
however, but the Nineteenth District will go back upon me upon the silver ques- 
tion. If they do, I shall count ft an honorable discharge. 

These and more of the same tenor, which I might produce from 
his correspondence, show the extreme peri] attending his position 
upon the currency and silver questions, but he never flinched, he never 
wavered ; he faced all the dangers, assumed all the risks, voting and 
speaking for what he believed would secure the highest good. He 
stood at the forefront, with the waves of an adverse popular sentiment 
beating against him, threatening his political ruin, fearlessly contend- 
ing for sound principles of finance against public clamor and a time- 
serving policy. To me his greatest effort was made on this floor in 
the Forty-fifth Congress, from his old seat yonder near the center 
aisle. He was at his best. He rose to the highest requirements of 
the subject and the occasion. His mind and soul were absorbed 
with his topic. He felt the full responsibility of his position and the 
necessity of averting a policy (the abandonment of specie resumption) 
which he believed would be disastrous to the highest interests of the 
country. Unfriendly criticism seemed only to give him breadth of 
contemplation and boldness and force of utterance. 

Those of us who were so fortunate as to hear him can not efface 
the recollection of his matchless effort. Both sides of this Chamber 



128 SPEECHES AND ADDRESSES OF WILLIAM McKINLEY. 

were eager listeners, and crowded galleries bent to catch every word, 
and all were sensibly moved by his forceful logic and impassioned elo- 
quence. He at once stepped to the front without rival or contestant, 
secure in the place he had fairly earned. The press and the people 
received the address with warm approval, and his rank before the 
country was fixed as a strong, faithful, and fearless leader. No one 
thing he had ever done contributed so much to his subsequent eleva- 
tion; no act of his life required higher courage; none displayed 
greater power ; none realized to him larger honors ; none brought him 
higher praise. 

Something of his real character and high aims as a legislator and 
public servant is disclosed in his private correspondence, from which 
I quote a single sentence : 

You know that I have always said that my whole public life was an experi- 
ment to determine whether an intelligent people would sustain a man in acting 
sensibly on each proposition that arose, and in doing nothing for mere show or 
demagogical effect. I do not now remember that I ever cast a vote of that latter 
sort. 

His experiment, although a perilous one and fraught with ex- 
treme danger, was yet successful, and that it was so is a high tribute 
not to him alone but to the justice and intelligence of the old West- 
ern Eeserve district and the whole American people. He was sus- 
tained, triumphantly sustained, over and over again by his immediate 
constituency. His State sustained him, and at last a Nation of fifty 
millions of people rewarded his courage and consistency with the 
highest honors it could bestow. 

Although elected. General Garfield never took his seat in the 
Senate of the United States. His legislative career ended here, 
where it had practically begun eighteen years before. His nomina- 
tion for the Presidency occurred soon after the Legislature of Ohio 
had chosen him Senator, and came to him, as did all of his honors, 
because deserved. Although unsought, no mere chance brought him 
this rare distinction. His solid reputation rendered it not improbable 
at any time. He had the qualities which attached his great party to 
him and the equipment which filled the fullest measure of public 
and party requirement. From the stirring scenes at Chicago to the 
succeeding election he bore himself like a statesman and patriot fit 
for the highest trust. He advanced in public confidence, and when- 
ever he met with or addressed the people he enlarged the circle of 
his admiring followers and friends. His brief term in the Presi- 
dency, so tragically ended, gave promise of large usefulness to the 



JAMES A. GARFIELD. 129 

country in the realization of the true American policy at home and 
abroad. His death filled the Nation with profound and universal 
sorrow, and all lands and all peoples sympathized in our overshadow- 
ing bereavement. 

In General Garfield, as in Lincoln and Grant, we find the best 
representation of the possibilities of American life. Boy and man, 
he typifies American youth and manhood, and illustrates the benefi- 
cence and glory of our free institutions. His early struggles for an 
education, his self-support, his " lack of means," his youthful yearn- 
ings, find a prototype in every city, village, and hamlet of the land. 
They did not retard his progress, but spurred him on to higher and 
nobler endeavor. His push and perseverance, his direct and un- 
deviating life purpose, his sturdy integrity, his Christian character, 
were rewarded with large results and exceptional honors ; honors not 
attainable anywhere else, and only to be acquired under the generous 
and helpful influences of a free government. 

He was twenty-three years of age when he confronted the more 
practical duties and the wider problems of life. All before had been 
training and preparation, the best of both, and his marvelous career 
ended before he was fifty. Few have crowded such great results and 
acquired such lasting fame in so short a life. Few have done so 
much for country and for civilization as he whom we honor to-day, 
stricken down as he was when scarce at the meridian of his powers. 
He did not flash forth as a meteor ; he rose with measured and 
stately step over rough paths and through years of rugged work. He 
earned his passage to every preferment. He was tried and tested at 
eyery step in his pathway of progress. He produced his passport at 
every gateway to opportunity and glory. 

His broad and benevolent nature made him the friend of all man- 
kind. He loved the young men of the country, and drew them to 
him by the thoughtful concern with which he regarded them. He 
was generous in his helpfulness to all, and to his encouragement and 
words of cheer many are indebted for much of their success in life. 
In personal character he was clean and without reproach. As a 
citizen, he loved his country and her institutions, and was proud of 
her progress and prosperity. As a scholar and a man of letters, he 
took high rank. As an orator, he was exceptionally strong and 
gifted. As a soldier, he stood abreast with the bravest and best of the 
citizen soldiery of the Eepublic. As a legislator, his most enduring 
testimonial will be found in the records of Congress and the statutes 
of his country. As President, he displayed moderation and wisdom, 



130 SPEECHES AND ADDRESSES OP WILLIAM McKINLEY. 

with executive ability, which gave the highest assurances of a most 
successful and illustrious administration. 

On the 19th day of December, 1876, the State of Massachusetts 
presented the statues of John Winthrop and Samuel Adams as her 
offerings to Memorial Hall. On that interesting occasion General 
Garfield said : 

As from time to time our venerable and beautiful hall has been peopled with 
the statues of the elect of the States, it has seemed to me that a Third House was 
being organized within the walls of the Capitol, a House whose members have 
received their high credentials at the hands of history and whose term of office 
will outlast the ages. Year by year we see the elect of their country in eloquent 
silence taking their places in the American Pantheon, bringing within its sacred 
circle the wealth of those immortal memories which made their lives illustrious. 
And year by year that august assembly is teaching a deeper and grander lesson to 
all who serve their brief hour in these more ephemeral Houses of Congress. And 
now two places of great honor have just been most nobly filled. 

Mr. Speaker, another place of great honor we fill to-day. Nobly 
and worthily is it filled. Garfield, whose eloquent words I have just 
pronounced, has joined Winthrop and Adams and the other illus- 
trious ones, as one of "the elect of the States," peopling yonder 
venerable and beautiful hall. He receives his high credentials from 
the hands of the State which has withheld from him none of her 
honors, and history will ratify the choice. We add another to the 
immortal membershii^. Another enters " the sacred circle." In 
silent eloquence from the "American Pantheon" another speaks, 
whose life-work, with its treasures of wisdom, its wealth of achieve- 
ment, and its priceless memories, will remain to us and our descend- 
ants a precious legacy, forever and forever. 



THE MOKEISON TAKIFF BILL. 

Speech in the House of Representatives, Forty-eighth 

Congress, April 30, 1884. 

[From the Congressional Hecord.] 

The House being in Committee of the Whole, and having under consideration 
the bill (H. R. 5,893) to reduce import duties and war-tariff taxes, Mr. McKinley 
said — 

Mr. Chairman : I do not intend to be drawn into any extended 

discussion of the two systems of levying duties upon imports, upon 
which tlie two political parties of the country are in conflict, except 
as such discussion may be necessary to the consideration of the bill 
now before us. 

It is gratifying to know that at last the true sentiment of the 
Democratic party of the country dominates the party in which it has 
30 long been in the majorit}^, and no longer submits to the dictation 
of a factious minority within its own ranks. It is gratifying because 
the people can no longer be deceived as to the real purpose of the 
party, which is, to break down the protective tariff and collect duties 
hereafter upon a pure revenue basis, closely approximating free trade. 
Patent platforms and the individual utterances of Democratic states- 
men will no longer avail, and false pretenses can no longer win. 

The bill reported from the Committee on Ways and Means is a 
proposition to reduce the duties upon all articles of imported mer- 
chandise, except those embraced in two schedules, to wit, spirits and 
silks, twenty per cent. It is to be a horizontal reduction, not a well 
matured and carefully considered revision. Its author makes no such 
claim for it, but confesses in his recent speech, that while a revision 
and adjustment are " essential," " they are believed to be unattainable 
at the present session of Congress." It admits of no exception or 
discrimination, except only that the proposed reduction shall not 
operate to reduce the duty below the rate at which any article was 



132 SPEECHES AND ADDRESSES OP WILLIAM McKINLEY. 

dutiable under the tariff act of 1861, commonly called " the Morrill 
tariff," and in no case shall cotton goods pay a higher rate of duty 
than forty per cent ad valorem^ and wools and woolens a higher rate 
than sixty per cent ad valorem^ and metals a higher rate of duty than 
fifty per cent ad valorem. With these exceptions and qualifications 
only eighty per cent of the duties now imposed by law are to be col- 
lected under the bill we are now considering. 

The friends of this measure have felt called upon in advance to 
apologize for the smallness of the proposed reduction, and attempt to 
conciliate that large majority of their party which is in favor of the 
English system by declaring that this is only a step, and the first 
step, in the direction of the ultimate enactment of a pure revenue 
tariff. It is the first move toward the destruction of that system 
of tariff duties which has been recognized in this Government from 
its foundation as essential to its revenues and the proper care of its 
own industries. It is not because they are favorable to protection, 
even incidentally, that only twenty per cent reduction is proposed, 
but because, believing this is all they can accomplish this year, they 
invite all the friends of tariff reform to join them, with the assurance 
that next year, and for the following years, additional steps will be 
taken which will ultimately bring our tariff taxation to a strictly 
revenue basis ; which means a tax upon tea and coffee and such other 
articles as we can not produce or manufacture in the United States, 
and the release of all others from customs duties. 

My distinguished friend, the Chairman of the Committee on Ways 
and Means, shakes his head in disapproval of that proposition. Why, 
this theory of taxation is as old as the Democratic party ! In the 
Forty-sixth Congress my distinguished friend and colleague [Mr. 
Hurd], who is one of the most conspicuous leaders of the free-trade 
party here to-day, introduced into this House a joint resolution a 
copy of which I have in my hand, in which he distinctly declared in 
the ninth section of his joint resolution, that to the end that the 
present tariff shall become one for revenue only the following 
changes should be made : 

1. Upon all dutiable articles producing little or no revenue to the Govern- 
ment the duty should be returned to a revenue basis or they should be placed on 
the free list. 

2. The duty on tea and coffee should be restored. 

And that is what a revenue tariff means. It means collection of 
revenue upon the fewest possible articles, chiefly of necessity, that are 
consumed by the people of this country. 



THE MORRISON TARIFF BILL. 133 

Mr. Hammond. Will the gentleman permit me to ask him a question ? 

Certainly. 

Mr. Hammond. What became of that resolution f 

It was not passed by the Forty-sixth Congress. It was undertaken 
to be passed, but no vote was ever had thereon. 

A Member. That was a Democratic Congress. 

Yes, the Democrats were in control ; but that Democratic Con- 
gress failed to do a great many things which it believed ought to be 
done. It lacked the courage of its convictions. The truth is, that 
has been a great trouble with the Democratic party for the last 
twenty-five years ; failing to enforce its true convictions. 

Mr. Hammond. That was the argument or the opinion of one man, but not 
of the party. 

It was not only the opinion of one man, permit me to say, but 
that resolution was reported to the House by the Chairman of the 
Committee on Ways and Means, upon which Committee was found 
such gentlemen as the distinguished Speaker of this House and the 
eminent gentleman from Virginia [Mr. Tucker]. Whether it was 
the voice of the House or not, it was the voice of that great Com- 
mittee which was the organ of the House on all economic questions. 

So that, before we enter fully upon the discussion of this particular 
measure, we might as well understand that this is but the first assault, 
which is to be followed by a succession of assaults, to the total over- 
throw of the protective system ; and that the fight we now make is 
not against this bill only, but is directed as well against that which 
will surely follow if we permit this incipient step to be taken. This 
apprehension is fully justified by the report of the majority and by 
the utterances of the advocates of the bill, who do not hesitate to say 
that this is only " a measure of partial relief." " It is," says the 
Chairman of the Committee on Ways and Means, " but an advance 
toward a more complete revenue reform." " It is," says the gentle- 
man from New York [Mr. Hewitt], "a step in the right direction, 
but it does not go far enough. It does not touch the heart of the 
question. It is the entering wedge." "While ray friend from Texas 
[Mr. Wellborn], who concluded his speech a moment ago, declared 
this to be the initial step which doomed protection. 

This is notice of Democratic purpose without cover or conceal- 
ment, and the friends of protection therefore know what this bill 
means. The issue is made up. The gage of battle is thrown down ; 



134 SPEECHES AND ADDRESSES OP WILLIAM McKINLEY. 

we cheerfully take it up, and appeal to the people, whose servants we 
are and to whose will, legally expressed, we will give cordial acquies- 
cence. 

My first objection to this bill is that it is too ambiguous and un- 
certain for a great public statute. It will involve dispute and con- 
tention upon nearly every invoice, and will lead to frequent, expen- 
sive, and annoying litigation. It will be difficult, if not impossible, 
of execution, requiring mathematical experts to determine the assess- 
able duty upon practically every bill of imported goods. It will not 
only require mathematical experts, but it will require a judge familiar 
with the interpretation of law, to give construction to and harmonize 
if possible its several inconsistent and conflicting provisions. I doubt 
if any member of the Ways and Means Committee would be bold 
enough to venture upon its administration ; certainly my friend from 
Texas [Mr. Mills] would not be willing to undertake its execution ; 
and I am sure that the Chairman, if himself required to give it force 
and construction, would never have brought it into this House, and 
would be the first to pray for its repeal. 

On a large number of articles under the bill the duties will be de- 
termined by the Morrill tariff of 1861. Under the cotton schedule 
there will be four classes; flax, four classes; metals, twenty-one 
classes ; books and sugar, one class each ; wood, two classes ; earthen- 
ware, two classes; provisions, four classes; chemical products, six 
classes ; sundries, twenty-three classes, the duties upon which the act 
of 18G1 will determine and control, so that the Morrill act will be in 
constant requisition and use in the determination of duties. It would 
have been better legislation upon the part of the majority, more cer- 
tain and statesmanlike, to have proposed a re-enactment of the Mor- 
rill tariff, taking it as a whole, than the uncertain and incongruous bill 
they now offer. 

Again, where an article pays an ad valorem rate under one act, and 
a specific or compound rate under the other, difficulties at once arise. 
Of these there are one hundred and eighteen classes, of which only 
four pay a specific duty under the act of 1861, and only three pay an 
ad valorem duty, and four pay compound duties under the proposed 
bill ; the remainder pay specific duties. These represent cases only 
where there is no doubt of the effect of the bill, and this is the legis- 
lation which the statesmen of the Forty-eighth Congress offer us. 

Mr. Morrison. Would the bill commend itself to the favor of the gentleman 
if the Morrill tariff clause was stricken out? Would the gentleman then give the 
bill his support % 



THE MORRISON TARIFF BILL. 135 

I will answer my distinguished and honorable friend by saying 
that I would not support this bill if it was a straight 20-per-cent re- 
duction of the duties of 1883, and I will tell him why I would not. 
Some articles of imported merchandise can better stand a reduction 
of twenty per cent than others. A 20-per-cent reduction will destroy 
some of the great manufacturing industries of the United States, 
while a few others might live. It would be death to some and only 
distress to others. That is why I would not vote for a simple 20-per- 
cent reduction, horizontally applied to every article imported into 
this country. 

There are other articles not included in either enumeration. 
There will be found many difficult and perplexing questions arising 
from the various rates of duties under the two acts. It will be diffi- 
cult, if not impracticable, to conform the rates under the act of 1861 
to the classification and description of articles and the rates under the 
act of 1883. Where the description or classifications are different, 
how will you ascertain the dutiable rate? The mode of levying either 
the ad valorem^ specific, or compound duties is so confusing, requir- 
ing so much calculation, that it is almost impossible to disclose in the 
time allotted to me the difficulties to be encountered in the endeavor 
to administer the proposed bill. To illustrate, take iron ore ; an 
article subject under the act of 18C1 to an ad valorem rate, and un- 
der the proposed bill to a specific rate. The rate under the present 
law is 75 cents per ton, and by the bill under consideration is subject 
to a reduction of 20 per cent, making it 60 cents per ton. Under 
the act of 1861 it is subject to a duty of 20 per cent ad valorem. 
There was imported in the year 1883, 609,322 tons of iron ore, at an 
average cost of $2.61 per ton. The average price of $2.61 per ton is 
an exceptionally low price. A large proportion of the importations 
of this article the last year must have cost more than 13 per ton. If 
there should be none costing above 13 there will be no difficulty, but 
if it should cost over $3, say $3.05 per ton, the 20 per cent will be 61 
cents, and the duty under the proposed bill would, instead of 60, be 
61 cents, and so on, varying in every instance where there is any ex- 
cess above $3 per ton. By a reduction of one ninth of the proposed 
specific rates or its equivalent ad valorem,, 22.73 per cent, we reduce 
it below the act of 1861, and in every case where the value exceeds 
one sixth or more of the present value of 12.61 per ton the rates would 
have to be readjusted ; so that in a cargo of 1,000 tons, or less, there 
might be a dozen different rates. 

Take files, rasps, and floats. The difficulties are greatly increased. 



136 SPEECHES AND ADDRESSES OP WILLIAM McKINLEY. 

Under the act of 18G1 these are dutiable at 30 per cent ad valorem; 
under the act of 1883, at so much per dozen, according to length. 
There are four classes, namely, four inches and under ; from four to 
nine inches ; from nine to fourteen inches ; and over fourteen inches 
— all at different rates. You must ascertain the exact value of each 
per length, and calculate upon each to find the precise reduction 
or rate, so as not to be below the rate of 18G1, or above the maximum 
rate, as provided in the proposed bill. A similar difficulty is found 
as to wood screws, where the rates are so much at variance. 

I would like some of the advocates of this bill to sit down and 
make a calculation upon the articles I have named and give their 
dutiable rates. I am sure before they have finished their work they 
would pronounce this bill too complicated for human ingenuity and 
too uncertain for public law. 

The bill is full of just such complications and abounds in incalcu- 
lable inconsistencies and confusion, is indefinite and indeterminable, 
and is the work not of experts, is the outgrowth not of knowledge or 
information or study of the subject, but rather of the desire to do 
something — to take one step, no matter where it leads or what results 
may follow. 

Sulphur under the act of 1861 paid a duty of 20 per cent. Under 
the proposed bill, 18 per ton— equal to 20.56 per cent. A slight rise 
of one fortieth of the present cost would have the effect of changing 
the proposed rates, and the rates would be different upon every in- 
voice valued in excess of 140 per ton. Take brass sheathing or yel- 
low metal, gold leaf, metallic pens, grindstones, chloroform, hops, 
magnesia (calcined), sal soda, etc. : the change in values (and values 
are constantly changing) would make the duties different and the 
difficulties of ascertaining them greater. In every instance where 
the specific is substituted for the ad valorem rate, or vice versa, the 
value of each invoice would have to be ascertained to find out the 
equivalent specific for the ad valorem rate of 1861, and perhaps in 
one single cargo there would be a dozen or more different rates upon 
the same article, though these articles might vary only slightly in 
value. 

The absurdities of this bill, says an officer conversant with the 
revenue law, will be apparent to any one at all familiar with the prac- 
tical workings of our complicated tariff. By law the collector is 
charged with deciding the rate of duty and the appraiser with deter- 
mining the value. Practically, however, the appraising officers in- 
dorse upon the invoice both the statement of value and the rate of 



THE MORRISON TARIFF BILL. I37 

duty which in their judgment the goods should bear. At the larger 
ports of entry, like Boston and New York, this work is generally done 
by the grade of officers known as examiners, and their returns are 
generally accepted by the collector as the basis for liquidating the en- 
try. We will then see what work an examiner would have to do in 
computing the rates of duty, taking first, say, cotton goods. 

Under the tariff of March 3, 1883, cotton thread and cotton yarn 
pay eight different rates of duty dependent on value, the duty rang- 
ing from 10 cents to 48 cents a pound. The examiner will have first 
to determine the value of the merchandise, and which of the several 
eight different rates of duty it has to pay. Then he will have to take 
80 per cent of the rate applicable and see what ad valorem rate it 
amounts to. Then, if the rate is higher than 40 per cent ad valorem, 
all his labor has gone for naught, for the goods are to pay no higher 
duty than 40 per cent ad valorem, except such 40 per cent may be 
lower than the duty imposed by the Morrill tariff of 18G1. So he 
examines the Morrill tariff and finds that spool and other threads of 
cotton pay 30 per cent ad valorem ; that cotton yarn and cotton 
warps were not mentioned therein, and so probably fall into the classi- 
fication of manufactures of cottons not otherwise provided for, which 
also pay 30 per cent ad valorem ; so once more he raises the duty up 
again to 40 per cent. He next takes an invoice of cotton cloth and 
attempts to classify it. The rates of duty on cotton cloth are depend- 
ent upon various criteria : First, upon the number of threads to the 
square inch ; second, whether the goods are unbleached ; third, 
whether they are bleached; fourth, whether they are dyed, colored, 
stained, or painted. These complex conditions have to be ascertained 
and the rates of duty per square yard first applied by the act of 
March 3, 1883. When the amount of duty on this basis has been 
ascertained, the appraiser strikes off 20 per cent, making the 80 per 
cent under the Morrison bill. Then he has to appraise the goods for 
value, and if 80 per cent of the rates imposed by the act of March 3, 
1883, does not exceed the 40-per-cent restriction of the Morrison bill 
the examiner may rest contented, unless he again finds that his work 
is overruled by the remaining conditions found in the act of 1861, 
which may determine the whole thing. 

In the act of 1861 the rate of duty was dependent upon, first, 
whether the goods exceeded 140 threads to the square inch ; then from 
140 to 200 ; then for goods having more than 200 threads to the 
square inch. In the act of 1883 the duty is dependent, first, upon 
goods having less than 100 threads to the square inch ; then between 



138 SPEECHES AND ADDRESSES OP WILLIAM McKINLEY. 

100 and 200 ; and then exceeding 200 ; so that the conditions and 
classification of the two acts are not the same. 

Now take Schedule K, relating to wool and woolens. By the 
Morrison bill 80 per cent of existing duties are to be imposed, pro- 
vided that none of the goods contained therein shall pay a higher 
duty than 60 per cent ad valorem, coupled again with the check 
found in the Morrill tariff. The duties imposed by this schedule 
have been carefully adjusted with reference to the various qualities of 
goods, their position in the trade, and to a large extent with reference 
to the position they occupy in the various branches of American 
manufactures. It is now symmetrical, and easily understood. To say 
that no goods under that schedule shall pay any more than GO per 
cent, as does the Morrison bill, is to do violence to whatever principle 
there may be in the schedule. Besides, in comparing the wool tariff 
in the act of March 3, 1883, with that in the Morrill tariff, it is found 
that the groups and classifications are so entirely different as to make 
comparison in many cases impossible. 

Now, turn to the iron tariff. Eighty per cent of the existing 
duties are to be imposed on articles in Schedule C, provided that none 
of the articles shall pay higher duties than 50 per cent ad valorem. 
If there is any merit whatever in the tariff as it now stands as a 
protection to American manufacturers iu their competition with the 
cheap labor of Europe, by which they have been enabled to develop 
the various branches of American manufactures, a reduction to a 
common level of 50 per cent ad valorem is neither sensible nor just. 
By such a rule there are many articles on which the duties have been 
carefully adjusted, where the ad valorem duty of 50 per cent would 
increase the trouble consequent upon undervaluations. 

Then, again, the bill provides that when under existing law any of 
said articles are grouped together and made dutiable at one rate, noth- 
ing in that act shall operate to reduce the duty below the highest 
rate at which any article was dutiable under the Morrill tariff. What 
is meant by " grouping together " is not explained by the Chairman of 
the Committee, and will prove a constant source of contention and 
litigation. 

In the act of 1883 iron or steel wire of various dimensions have 
separate classifications. The rates have been carefully adjusted. In 
the Morrill tariff, wire not less than one fourth of an inch in diam- 
eter is classified with steel in ingots, bars, and sheets, and is dutiable 
at various rates, according to value, beginning with 1^ cents per 
pound or 2 cents per pound, according as the value is over or under 



THE MORRISON TARIFF BILL. I39 

7 cents ; but then, again, taking the tariff of 1883, we find that iron 
or steel wire above Xo, 5 is not enumerated, and pays 45 per cent 
ad valorem duty, so that we have to ascertain whether the 45 per 
cent ad valorem^ less the 20 per cent reduction, is more than the 
\\ cents per pound or 2 cents per pound imposed by the Morrill 
tariff. 

The changes in trade or commercial designations of the various 
manufactures of metal since the Morrill tariff was enacted have been 
so great that the present tariff can not be compared with it. There- 
fore it would be in many cases difficult if not impossible to tell to 
what group many of the articles should be assigned. 

The ambiguity and uncertainty in the tariff seriously embarrass 
all branches of trade as well as the administrative officers of the De- 
partment. If a person is intending to engage either in the manufac- 
ture or importation of any article affected by the tariff, he naturally 
wants to know beforehand the rate of duty he will have to pay or the 
amount of protection he will find in the existing tariff. He gets no 
light from this bill. He must grope in the dark. 

In ascertaining the rate of duty on an article that pays a com- 
pound duty — that is, a duty upon both quantity and value — under 
the proposed bill, and an ad valorem or specific rate under the act 
of 1861, a mathematical calculation would be necessary in each case 
to ascertain what rates to assess ; first, to ascertain whether it is at 
or above the rate named in the act of 1861, or as to the restric- 
tion of the proviso in the proposed bill touching cottons, metals, and 
woolens. 

And all these absurdities, complications, and incongruities a ma- 
jority of this House are asked to solemnly enact into public law, which 
the people of this country are asked to submit to, because there are 
gentlemen who are unwilling to sit down and carefully mature a dis- 
criminating tariff act. 

The advocates of this bill criticised the Republicans of the last 
Congress because they created a Tariff Commission, asserting that 
such action was a confession of the incapacity of a majority of the 
Committee on Ways and Means to revise the tariff. By reason of in- 
capacity, as they declared, the Committee " farmed out " the subject to 
a Commission of nine experts. Much opprobrium was sought to be 
put upon the majority because of its alleged abrogation of a constitu- 
tional duty. What can be said of the capacity of the majority of the 
Committee on Ways and Means as evidenced by the bill now before 
us ? It is a confession upon its face of absolute incapacity to grapple 
10 



140 SPEECHES AND ADDRESSES OF WILLIAM McKINLEY. 

with the great subject. [Laughter and applause on the Republican 
side 1 The Morrison bill will never be suspected of having passed 
the scrutiny of intelligent experts like the Tariff Commission. This 
is a revision by the cross-cut process. It gives no evidences of the 
expert's skill. It is the invention of indolence, I will not say of ig- 
norance, for the gentlemen of the majority of the Committee on 
Ways and Means are competent to prepare a tariff bill. I repeat, it 
is not only the invention of indolence, but it is the mechanism of a 
botch workman. A thousand times better refer the question to an 
intelli<^ent Commission which will study the subject in its relations to 
the revenues and industries of the country than to submit to a bill 

like this. 

They have determined upon doing something, no matter how mis- 
chievous, that looks to the reduction of import duties; and doing it, 
too in spite of the fact that not a single request has come either from 
the great producing or great consuming classes of the United States 
for any change in the direction proposed. With the power in their 
hands they have determined to put the knife in, no matter where it 
cuts nor how much blood it draws. It is the volunteer surgeon, un- 
bidden, insisting upon using the knife upon a body that is strong and 
healthy; needing only rest and release from the quack whose skill is 
limited to the horizontal amputation, and whose science is barren ot 
either knowledge or discrimination. And then it is not to stop with 
one horizontal slash ; it is to be followed by another and still another, 
until there is nothing left either of life or hope. And the doctri- 
naires will then have seen an exemplification of their pet science in 
the destruction of the great productive interests of the country, and 
" the starving poor," as denominated by the majority, will be found 
without work, shelter, or food. The senthnent of this country is 
against any such indiscriminate proposition. The petitions before 
the Ways and Means Committee from twenty to thirty States of this 
Union appeal to Congress to let the tariff rest where it is, in general, 
while others are equally importunate to have the duties on two or 
three classes of American products raised. The laboring men are 
unanimous against this bill. These appeals should not go unheeded. 
The farmers for whom you talk so eloquently have not asked for it. 
' There is no appeal from any American interest for this legislation. 
It is well, if this bill is to go into force, that on yesterday the 
other branch of Congress, the Senate, passed a Bankruptcy Bill. It is 
a fitting corollary to the Morrison bill; it is a proper and necessary 
companion. The Senate has done wisely, in anticipation of our ac- 



THE MORRISON TARIFF BILL. 141 

tion here, in providing legal means for settling with creditors, for 
wiping out balances, and rolling from the shoulders of our people 
the crushing burdens which this bill will impose. 

The Chairman of the Committee reporting the bill falls into a 
grave error, not intentionally of course, in his use of the table fur- 
nished by the Chief of the Bureau of Statistics, which, if not ex- 
plained, may mislead. It will be found that the reduction secured 
by the bill of last year was not as small as is alleged, but far greater, 
as I will show. 

It will appear from that statement that there has been a reduction 
in receipts of duties amounting to $14,752,371, notwithstanding an 
increase of rates upon earthenware and china and on still wines, on 
champagnes, which are included in the importations under the head 
of " all other dutiable goods." The small difference of 1.74 per cent 
shown by the table exhibited by the Chairman of the Ways and 
Means Committee in his report accompanying this bill between the 
old law and the act of March 3, 1883, is delusive, and arises from the 
low price of sugar and other merchandise since the new law went 
into effect, and therefore does not fairly disclose the actual percentage 
of reduction. 

In the year 1882 there was imported 976,099,448 pounds of sugar, 
valued at 144,432,310 at a specific rate of 2.37 cents per pound, equal 
to 52.17 per cent ad valorem at an average value of 4.55 cents per 
pound ; while in 1883, 1,205,893,322 pounds, valued at 146,793,822 at 
an average specific rate of 1.95, equal to 50.26 per cent ad valorem at 
an average value only of 3.88 cents per pound, being 14.72 per cent 
less than cost of 1882. The difference between 2.37 cents per pound 
in 1882 and 1.95 cents per pound in 1883 is forty-two hundredths of 
one cent per pound less, or a reduction of 17.72 per cent on sugar. 
The importation of sugar in 1883 was one fifth of the value of the 
entire importations, and it is fair to assume that the exceptionally 
low price of other imjDorted articles will fully account for the small 
apparent reduction shown by the table of the Chairman of the Com- 
mittee. 

The bill will not secure the results claimed for it by its advocates 
in decreasing the revenues of the Government. The history of all 
tariff legislation is that a decrease of duty increases the imports tem- 
porarily and therefore swells the revenue from that source. The 
honorable gentleman from Virginia [Mr. Tucker] said, in a speech 
in this House on May 8, 1878, that " a decrease of duty will increase 
the imports still more," and of course add to the revenues. 



14:2 SPEECHES AND ADDRESSES OP WILLIAM McKINLEY. 

The gentleman from Connecticut [Mr. Eaton], in liis speech made ■ 
on March 25, 1884, said of this bill : ■ 

The theory of my friend from Arkansas, like the bill of my distinguished fl 
friend the Chairman of the Committee on Ways and Means, has not been quite 
sufficiently well considered, because that bill, if it ever becomes a law, will increase 
the surplus in the Treasury, and not decrease it. 

Mr. Hewitt said, March 26, 1884 : 

But what I fear in regard to the bill reported from the Committee on Ways 
and Means is, it may be delusive in that particular, and, so far from being a meas- 
ure of reduction of revenue, it may turn out to be a measure for mcrease of rev- 
enue I do not say that it will be so. I hope that it will not ; but if the free list 
is made larger, if it is extended, then it is certain that the revenue will be re- 
duced, but it is only by enlarging the free list that we can be sure of any such 
result. 

Mr. Mills said that " this bill would increase importations " and 
correspondingly increase the revenues against which every interest is 
opposed. Failing to accomplish that, where is the virtue of this 
measure? What effect can it have except to disturb the business of the 
country, diminish values, and decrease the price of labor? 

The gentleman from Texas [Mr. Mills] was greatly mistaken in 
opening his speech on April 15th, when he declared the demand for 
a reduction of duties upon imports was universal throughout the 
United States. He omitted to state from what source he derived his 
information and from what quarter this demand came. I have been 
unable to find a single petition presented to this House or referred to 
the Committee on Ways and Means by the House suggesting, much 
less demanding, the reduction of import duties proposed by this bill, 
or any other reduction of customs duties. On the contrary, the 
petitions have been uniformly in opposition to the enactment of this 

measure. -, oi. 4. 

I have been unable to find any sentiment m the United btates, 
except in the utterances of the Democratic majority in this House, 
and outside of the city of my distinguished friend [Mr. Dorsheimer] 
who sits before me, being the free-trade clubs of his and the neigh- 
boring city of Brooklyn, any sentiment in favor of the passage of this 
bill. There is where it exists, and it is a remarkable fact that that 
class of gentlemen « neither sow nor reap, and do not gather into 
barns." 

Mr. Kasson. And the lilies! 

Yes, the lilies. " They are like the lilies of the field ; they toil 
not, neither do they spin." [Laughter.] 



THE MORRISON TARIFF BILL. I43 

They have fixed incomes, belong to the independent and wealthy 
classes, who now buy most of their goods abroad, and hope to buy 
them cheaper if the duties are reduced. 

The gentleman from Texas justifies his advocacy of this measure 
on the ground that it is in the interest of the farmers of the United 
States, and a large portion of his speech was devoted to showing that 
with this reduction the markets of the world would be open for the 
competition of our food producers. Why, sir, they are open now. He 
announced the startling doctrine that a foreign market was better 
than a home market for the farmer ; that is, it was better that the 
farmer should ship his products to other nations rather than to sell 
them to consumers at home, and that the tariff was a restraint and 
obstruction to the sale of our products abroad. He did not disclose 
how or in what way. I take it the farmer will send his products 
abroad when there is a demand for them, and only then. He did not 
show us in what way the benefit was to accrue. He did not demon- 
strate that the price received by the producer would be larger if sold 
to a foreign consumer than if sold to oUr own people. 

It has always seemed to me that it was infinitely better that the 
farmer should have a market at home, a market at his very door, than 
to be compelled to seek a market in distant countries and among dis- 
tant populations. As long as there is a demand at home it is a self- 
evident proposition that it is better than to seek consumers abroad, 
and that the home demand is safer, more reliable, and more profitable 
than any foreign market can possibly be, American buyers are the 
best in the world. He did not tell the Committee what is the fact, 
that ninety per cent of the food products of the United States is con- 
sumed at home, and that only about ten per cent has to find a market 
abroad. He differs, too, from his colleague [Mr. Hewitt], who said 
in his speech, March 26th : 

Now how can the farmer be benefited? What does he want? He wants to 
sell his productions at a higher price. And how is he going to sell his products 
at a higher price as the grain trade stands to-day? The markets of Europe are 
overcrowded with food products. To-day the farmer is met at Liverpool and 
London by the food products of India, and that competition, so far from being 
less, is going to increase. Therefore the farmer has reached the limit of the de- 
mand for his products in foreign lands. Where, then, is he to find his market 
for them ? He must find his market at home ; and how is he going to get it at 
home ? Why, only by one method — manufactures must be fostered and grow, 
and not be diminished, 

Mr. Morrison. What per cent is consumed by the manufacturing people ? 

They consume all that they need and no more ; and the gentle- 



144 SPEECHES AND ADDRESSES OF WILLIAM McKINLEY. 

man's proposition would drive these workingmen, who are the con- 
sumers of the products of the farm, out of the factories and force 
them into the great fertile lands of the West, and instead of their 
being the consumers of the products of the farmer they would become 
his competitors. 

This foreign market, for which every tariff idealist and every 
Democratic free trader longingly sighs, is only mythical in the present 
condition of our country. We should capture the home market first, 
and get full control of it, before we seek the foreign market. We 
can not command a foreign market until we can control our own. 
It seems to me that proposition is so plain and simple that it must 
commend itself to every intelligent man. 

The talk about free raw material and the necessity for our having 
it in order to compete with the markets in other lands is wholly ideal. 
Raw materials are partially free now when manufactured for export 
purposes, and any citizen of the United States can import a large 
number of materials and manufacture them, and if he exports he 
receives back from the Government ninety per cent of the duty he 
paid upon such article or material. 

Sections 3019, 3020, 3021, 3023, 3024, and 3026 of the Revised 
Statutes of the United States declare in their several provisions that 
on certain materials imported here for manufacture, when put into 
the finished product and exported, the manufacturer is entitled to a 
return of all the duty paid less ten per cent. So that if we are ready 
now for the foreign market, if we are ready to compete with Eng- 
land and France and Belgium by the use of free raw materials 
from the other side, we have them in a large measure now, and 
no further legislation is needed to encourage our export trade. 
When we get able to supply ourselves with all the articles we use 
and employ, we can then address ourselves more intelligently to the 
foreign trade. This bill will aid in diminishing our great market 
for agricultural products. The market which consumes 90 per cent 
of our farm products is worth preserving, and is infinitely more im- 
portant and valuable than any other. 

Let me pause here to say that free raw material has nothing to 
commend it to legislative favor which is not common to every other 
American product. The same necessity for protection, within reason- 
able limits, applies to what are commonly called raw materials as to 
the finished or more advanced manufacture. There is no such thing 
as raw materials distinguished from other products of labor. Labor 
enters into all productions, the commonest as well as the higher forms. 



THE MORRISON TARIFF BILL. 145 

The ore costs something to mine it ; the coal, to take it from the 
ground ; the stone, to quarry it ; much labor enters into the produc- 
tion of wool ; leather costs something to tan ; and to the extent that 
labor enters into their preparation, what are usually termed raw 
materials should have ratable protection with the completed product. 
Pig iron is the raw material for bar iron, and yet no one has been 
heard to advocate free pig iron. Cloth is the raw material for the 
tailor, the finest steel is the crude material of the watchmaker, and 
so on interminably. There can be no just line drawn, and no reason 
exists for such a discrimination. "When the country is ready for free 
trade let us have it in all things without exception or restriction. 

We forget in all our discussions the growth of the population of 
the United States. We forget that about every twenty years a nation 
of people comes to our shores, whose labor we employ and whose wants 
we supply. Our population in the last fourteen years has increased 
fully 17,000,000 — half of the entire population of Austria, three times 
the population of Belgium, seventy per cent more than the entire 
population of Brazil, equaling the population of Egypt, and one half 
of the population of Great Britain and Ireland. These become the 
consumers of the products of the farm and increase them, and en- 
large our market. They are the best customers and the most certain 
and reliable. 

The farmer is best off with a home market. The farmer himself 
knows this, and no amount of rhetoric can deceive him. The gentle- 
man from New York [Mr. Hewitt], himself a practical business man, 
recognizes it. The fathers of the Republic saw it and proclaimed it. 
We can only have a profitable home market by encouraging manu- 
facturing industries. " Plant the forge by the farm " is the old doc- 
trine, and it is as true now as it was when uttered. 

Thomas Ewing, of Ohio, a distinguished United States Senator, 
expressed the necessity for manufacturing and its benefits to agri- 
culture in the following language, on February 17, 1832, the tariff 
then being under consideration in the Senate : 

In short, every portion of the world was searched by our intelligent merchants, 
and all combined did not furnish a market adequate to our surplus productions. 
Every farmer in Ohio long knew and felt the pressure consequent upon this state 
of things. Year after year their stacks of wheat stood unthrashed, scarcely worth 
the manual labor of separating the grain from the straw ; so low was it reduced 
in comparison with manufactured articles, that I have known forty bushels of 
wheat given for a pair of boots. Such was the state of things in the Western 
country prior to and at the time of the revision of the tariff in 1824. 

Then, sir, at the period of which I am speaking— 1832, 1823, and 1824— which 



146 SPEECHES AND ADDRESSES OF WILLIAM McKlNLEY. 

I refer to as the season of the greatest agricultural depression, especially in the 
"West, we had supplied and were supplying every country upon the globe with our 
products to the extent that they would receive, and even beyond it. We had 
glutted every market, and by the excess of the supply which we furnished we less- 
ened the aggregate sum which we received in return. This was the case with 
every article of our products, whether of the forest or the field ; everything which 
we had to export or which our labor would produce, and which could be made 
the subject of exchange, was sent abroad and exchanged for foreign manufactured 
articles. 

The state of things which I have dwelt upon somewhat at large was that of 
our whole country in 1823-'24. It was the situation of the farmer, with his ten 
boys, who could find employment for but eight ; and such more especially was his 
situation in the Middle and Western States. The low state to which our farming 
interest was reduced, the low price to which our fine lands and the products of 
our lands had sunk, produced unexampled pecuniary distress and called aloud for 
relief. Our statesmen were not slow in discovering the cause of the evil and in 
applying the remedy ; hence their united support of the tariff of 1824, the merit 
of which I claim for the members from the Middle and Western States. 

The honorable Senator graphically describes the effect upon agri- 
culture of the low tariff prior to 1824, and subsequent history and 
experience are only confirmatory of what he so strikingly said then. 
And to such a feast the controlling wing of the Democratic party in- 
vites you again ! 

We invite your attention to another and better picture. The 
growth of this country in the last twenty years is the wonder of the 
world. Our manufacturing products have increased from $1,885,- 
000,000 in 1860 to $5,369,000,000 in 1880. Our agricultural develop- 
ment shows a like gratifying progress. There was an increase in the 
acreage in farms from 407,000,000 acres in 1860 to 536,000,000 acres 
in 1880, an increase of thirty-two per cent ; and in the value of farms 
an increase from 16,645,000,000 in 1860 to $10,197,000,000 in 1880. 
We started in 1830 with 23 miles of railway. In 1860 we had 30,635 
miles ; in 1880 we had 84,393 miles ; in 1881 we had 94,147 miles ; and 
now we have about 120,000 miles. Our material wealth has increased 
beyond parallel in everything which goes to make the Nation strong 
and self-dependent. The energies of our people have opened up new 
avenues of industrial development, have overcome what seemed in- 
superable barriers. The finances of the country were never in better 
condition than to-day. Our exports during the last fiscal year were 
over $804,000,000, as against $733,000,000 during the preceding year, 
an increase of nearly 171,000,000. The value of the exports of manu- 
factures from the United States during the last year was $112,000,000 
in round numbers, as against $103,000,000 during the preceding year, 



THE MORRISON TARIFF BILL. I47 

and exceeded the exports of any previous year in the history of the 
country. Our exports have exceeded our imports over $100,000,000, 
so that the balance of trade is in our favor. We are rapidly reducing 
the National debt, and have been doing so for years at an unexampled 
rate. Our interest charge has been reduced, and we present the spec- 
tacle of a Government, in less than twenty years from the close of a 
great, destructive, and wasteful war, with unprecedented credit and a 
surplus of revenue in the Treasury. 

This has all been accomplished during an era of protective tariffs, 
which the free traders characterize as extortion and robbery upon the 
people, destructive of their energies, and obstructive to industrial 
progress and National development. How it contrasts with the low 
tariff period from 1847 to 1860, when we had practically a revenue 
tariff, such as is advocated by the Democratic party of to-day ! It 
was a period of universal business depression, deficiencies in the public 
Treasury, when both Nation and individuals were compelled to bor- 
row money at the most exorbitant rates of interest ; and it was in this 
condition that the Eepublican party found the country when it came 
into power on the 4th of March, 1861. The Democratic policy of the 
tariff was immediately reversed ; and the splendid achievements in 
every department of industrial activity, the large revenues of the 
Government, its improved credit, and its present flourishing monetary 
conditions are the highest vindication of its policy. Every class in 
the country has been benefited. The necessities of life have been 
cheapened to the consumer. Every article of merchandise that has 
been made possible of manufacture in this country by reason of pro- 
tective duties has been cheapened, and none have been enhanced in 
price. 

England is more concerned to-day for the passage of this bill than 
any citizen or class of citizens of the United States, unless it be the 
importers. She is watching with the deepest concern the progress 
of this bill, and she does not refrain from saying that if it becomes a 
law it will put money into the pockets of her manufacturers. She 
does not hesitate to declare that from selfish motives she wants the 
full success of the Democratic party in this measure. Here is what 
her trade papers say. 

The London Iron and Coal Trades Eeview for December 7, 1883, 
says : 

Our best customer for iron, steel, hardware, and many other goods has long 
been the United States, notwithstanding the very heavy duties that are there 
levied, and the greatest interest is always manifested by our business men in 



14,8 SPEECHES AND ADDRESSES OP WILLIAM McKINLEY. 

American politics where they are likely to affect the tariff. It is pretty evident 
that the protectionists are no longer to have it all their own way. 

The Machinery Market, a London publication, said, in Januury 
last : 

The year is likely to see important political changes on the other side of the 
Atlantic which will have their influence on business here. Events move rapidly 
in America, and the coming triumph of the Democratic party there means the 
triumph of the free-trade movement in the States. It is not to be supposed that 
there will be free imports into the States, but " a tariff for revenue only, which 
is the leading cry of the Democrats, will open an immense additional field for the 
sale of English manufactured goods in the States. 

The same journal said, in March last : 

It appears, therefore, on the whole, we are buying nearly as much in the way 
of manufactures in iron and steel, machinery, etc., from the States as we are sell- 
ing to them. The result must be looked upon as miserable, and is not equal to 
our position as a manufacturing country. The United States is a producing 
country, not a manufacturing, in the sense to which we apply this term to our- 
selves. It is high time we turned our attention actively elsewhere for a better 
customer, not forgetting all the same to watch the opportunities which the tariff 
reduction in the States will open out to us. 

The London Iron and Coal Trades Review for February 8, 1884, 
says : 

Though our trade with the United States has fallen off very much of late, 
that country still occupies the position of our leading customer, and every change 
in its condition yet has its influence upon our market. It is therefore important 
to notice that the intelligence from the other side has been of a rather more en- 
couraging character during the last few days. 

At present, and for some time past, there has been little chance of supplying 
English pig iron at a profit in the States, owing to the very low prices of native 
iron. But the most satisfactory news is that on Monday Mr. Morrison, the Chair- 
man of the Ways and Means Committee, inti'oduced another tariff bill in the 
House of Representatives. Considering that it was only last year that a tariff bill 
was passed, which considerably reduced the duties on a large number of articles, 
the introduction of another bill so soon affords a sign that the protective doctrine 
is a good deal " played out." The new bill proposes a reduction of 20 per cent 
in the duties, to take effect from July 1st. Mr. Morrison and his colleagues, who 
have drawn up the bill, have shown their wisdom in placing in the free list a 
number of raw materials, such as copper and iron ores, slack, and coal. 

They had not seen the amended bill when this article was writ- 
ten ; for iron ore, etc., have been left out of the new revision. 

Mr. Morrison. I would be glad if it was in. 

I have no doubt you would be glad if it was in ; and I am only 
surprised the distinguished gentleman should have permitted his own 



THE MORRISON TARIFF BILL. I49 

convictions to be overruled by that little factious element in bis own 

party that would control legislation. [Applause.] 

Though the bill may not pass without considerable modification, it will prob- 
ably result in a substantial reduction. 

To these ojiinions we may add the following blunt but frank ad- 
mission by the London Spectator on the 8th of December last : 

Of course the north of England holds that American free trade would be 
greatly to the interest of British manufacturers. 

And this from the Pall Mall Gazette : 

The progress of the Morrison bill will be watched with considerable interest 
by English exporters to the American market, inasmuch as it can hardly fail to 
tend in their favor. 

This deep solicitude of our English friends is of course unselfish 
and philanthropic ; it is all for our benefit, for our good, for our pros- 
perity. It is disinterested purely, and arises from the earnest wish of 
the English manufacturers to see our own grow and prosper. 

They want this market. It is the best in the world. They can 
not get it wholly while our tariff remains as at present. They can 
not get it so long as our manufactures caii be maintained. They must 
be destroyed, their fires must be put out, and this Congress is to-day 
engaged in an effort to help England, not America, to build up Eng- 
lish manufacturers at the expense of our own. 

The foreign manufacturers do not conceal their deep interest in 
the success of the Democratic party. They do not conceal the rea- 
son for such interest. It is because the party stands for a doctrine 
which will break down American competition and open up the mar- 
ket of this great Nation to the products of English skill, English 
labor, and English capital. Why, sir, they saw the first glimpses of 
the realization of their theories in the elections throughout this coun- 
try last fall. They heralded as the dawning victory for free trade the 
triumph of that sentiment in the organization of this House in De- 
cember last. That victory was welcomed everywhere upon the other 
side and by the importers on this. There was not a manufacturer in 
England who did not see in that overwhelming defeat of the protec- 
tion sentiment in the Democratic party, in the setting aside of one 
of its oldest and most trusted leaders, gain and prosperity to him, 
distress and loss to his American competitors. They rejoiced and 
were made glad. 

One firm of importers celebrated that free-trade victory by chris- 
tening a line of English goods with the significant trade-mark, " The 



150 SPEECHES AND ADDRESSES OF WILLIAM McKINLEY. 

Carlisle Shape" [laughter and applause], and published it as "the 
coming thing" [applause], named in honor of Speaker Carlisle, to 
whom that country looked to reduce the present outrageous tariff on 
crockery. [Applause.] This Democratic House is now employed in 
the direction of this suggestion under the leadership of my distin- 
guished friend, Mr. Morrison. This line of goods, named for one of 
the ablest and purest Democrats in the House or the country, comes 
from his representative capacity. He stands at the head of a great 
political organization committed to the English system, which all 
England believes will increase her prosperity and enrich her manu- 
facturers. 

These goods, made in a foreign pottery with foreign materials, 
foreign labor, and foreign capital, are fittingly crowned with the head 
of the British lion. [Applause.] Pass this bill, and you will all have 
" shapes " and be honored with like manifestations of approval. [Ap- 
plause.] I know my honored friend, the Speaker, craves no such 
distinction ; I know he would shrink from such public demonstra- 
tions of approval, and I believe he will not feel flattered by this well- 
intentioned compliment ; but they could not avoid expressing in some 
public way their appreciation of his victory. This is but an advanced 
manifestation of the joy which will be felt on the other side should 
the bill pass. This bill is a progressive measure ; you can discern that 
at a glance. It commences where we started in 1861, and occupies 
the ground we broke twenty-three years ago and which we abandoned 
long since. It has none of the virtues of originality, and its chief 
claim to merit is the fact that it is something a little like what we 
approved in 1861, forgetful of the fact that in 1861 we were legislat- 
ing for 30,000,000 of people, and now have 55,000,000, and that all 
our economic and industrial conditions have changed. It was a good 
thing then, wise and necessary. Your party then opposed it, and now 
that we have outgrown it, advanced from it, you are ready to adopt it. 
We are glad even at this late day to have your approval of that great 
measure, which served its purpose at the time — and it was a high and 
noble one. We would have been more gratified could you have seen 
its merits a generation ago, when it was alive and in force, and suited 
to our needs and essential to our then revenue necessities and indus- 
trial development. 

There is a remarkable exhibition of free-trade confusion and con- 
tradiction in the speech of my learned colleague [Mr. Hurd] made in 
this House on April 7, 1884, in his discussion of the Wool Bill. 

First. He asserts that the manifest effect of an increase of the 



THE MORRISON TARIFF BILL. 151 

duty upon wool is to increase the price of woolen goods, because it 
adds to the price of the wool, to which he is unalterably opposed be- 
cause it imposes new burdens upon the consumers of wool, who use 
it " as a shelter to the houseless and a covering to the shivering." 

Second. He asserts that a high duty upon foreign wool means a 
low price for American wool ; the logic of which is that the higher the 
duty upon the foreign article the lower the price of the domestic 
one. Now if cheap wool be the real necessity of the manufacturer, 
as my colleague states in his first proposition, to the end that the 
laboring man may have cheap goods, then, according to his second 
proposition, the way to secure it is to increase the duty. 

If he would do that the wool grower would be satisfied, and the 
consumers for whom he speaks ought not to complain. 

He does not stop with the mere assertion that protective duties 
have lowered the price of wool to the consumer, but he gives histor- 
ical facts. He says : " During the low duties on wool from 1847 to 
1861 the farmers got five cents per pound more for their wool than 
they have received from 1867 until now under the high protective 
tariff adopted in the year last named." He enforces his argument by 
invoking the experience of England and France, and if his proposi- 
tion be true, then protective duties are not added to the cost of the 
imported goods, and if he wants cheap wool for his shivering con- 
sumers, the course to pursue is not to reduce the duty on wool, as 
proposed in the Morrison Bill, but to increase it, as provided for in 
the Converse Bill ; and according to his second proposition the latter 
would secure cheap wool. 

I was glad, too, to find my colleague conceding, as he did, " that 
it is the American manufacturer who makes the market for the 
American farmers, and just as he is prosijerous or depressed is the 
price of wool high or low," and the same must be true of every prod- 
uct of the farm. So that if we would bring prosperity to the Amer- 
ican wool grower and the American farmer, we must foster and 
encourage and maintain our woolen and other manufactures at all 
hazards, and this can only be done by adequate duties levied upon 
foreign goods which compete with our own manufactures. Free trade 
or a revenue tariff will glut this market with foreign woolens made 
by foreign labor cheaper than our own, and the effect will be to break 
down our woolen factories, " which make the market for our own 
farmers." This is the proposition of the Morrison Bill, plain and 
simple, or else this market will be overcrowded with foreign wools 
admitted at low duty, the effect of which will be to force ruinous 



152 SPEECHES AND ADDRESSES OF WILLIAM McKINLEY. 

prices upon our own producers, and eventually destroy this valuable 
production in the United States. 

I warn you that every assault made upon the woolen manufac- 
turer, no matter how slight, is directed alike at the wool grower. You 
can not cripple the one without diminishing the business of the other. 
The woolen manufacturers do not want free wool. They so declared 
before the Ways and Means Committee. They require our wools, 
and it will be to their serious disadvantage to curtail the production 
in the United States. The wool grower does not want woolen goods 
to come into this country free of duty. They want a market. They 
know that when the manufacturer thrives the price of wool is good 
and firm. 

Agriculture and manufactures should go hand in hand ; the one 
enriches the other ; the one trades with the other — they are mutually 
dependent one upon the other. There is no conflict of interest. 
Agriculture increases in its products and its wealth with the growth 
and increase of manufactures. Prices are better, steadier, and more 
reliable to the farmer, with prosperous manufacturing industries em- 
ploying labor which consumes and does not compete with his prod- 
ucts. Impair or destroy our ability to manufacture, strike down any 
of our great manufactures, and the farmer would be the first to seri- 
ously feel the loss. Dismiss the army of operatives from the work- 
shop and send them to the great unoccupied and fertile lands of the 
West, and the farmer would not only lose Just so many consumers or 
customers, but, more than that, he would find them as his competitors 
in the field of production. 

Finally, and of greater importance than all else, the effect of this 
bill will be to reduce the price of labor in the United States. 

My friend, the Chairman of the Committee on Ways and Means, 
indicates dissent by his manner. 

Mr. Morrison : We are doing that every day. 

Yes ; it has been done. If the gentleman will remember, there 
has been general depression all over the world, and wages have stood 
some reduction. But the proposition you make to-day, if it goes into 
operation, will inevitably reduce the price paid labor in the United 
States. 

This is the inevitable logic of the bill, and no amount of argument 
can escape it. Said an intelligent manufacturer, Mr. Day, of Ohio, 
in his statement before our Committee : 

No reduction of duty can be made without crippling our manufactures. 
There is no point on which we can make a reduction of cost, except on our skilled 

r 



THE MORRISON TARIFF BILL. I53 

labor, unless we are compelled to cut down the wages of common labor and all. 
We get our common labor at the market price, which is fixed not by us but bv 
the price of common labor in the neighborhood. We get our coal as cheaply, of 
course, as we can. We get our sand as cheaply as we can. We get our materials 
of all sorts as cheaply as we can. And there is nothing on which there is a range, 
or on which we can make a reduction, except skilled labor. Therefore, whatever 
reduction of duty is made must of necessity, to a very large degree, fall upon our 
skilled labor. 

I am not here to justify or defend Mr. Day. I am not here to de- 
fend any manufacturer or his methods. But I am here to say that 
just to the extent you reduce the duties on imports to that extent, the 
prices of labor must come down in order to enable us to compete with 
the manufacturers on the other side. That is the inevitable logic. 
Give us as cheap labor as they have in England (which I do not 
want) and we need no protection. [Applause]. 

Let me call a witness from the ranks of the advocates of this bill. 

Said Mr. Theodore W. Morris, of New York, an importer and free 
trader before the same Committee : 

Mr. McKiNLEY. Do I understand you to say that the reduction proposed by the 
pending bill would not affect the rate of wages ? I thought you said it would. 

Mr. Morris. I said that that was the usual tendency ; not that it necessarily 
would do so. 

Mr. McKiNLEY. What do you say about it now ? 

Mr. Morris. That has been usually the tendency. I think that has been the 
experience; but I do not admit that it is a necessity by any means. 

Mr. McKiNLEY. What would be the effect of a reduction of duty upon im- 
portation ; would the importation increase ? 

Mr. Morris. I think that if we could possibly dissipate these false and un- 
business ideas (in regard to special legislation) that any people go into business 
from philanthropic motives and in the great interest of American labor, and if 
you could put them closely and fairly on a business basis, there would be very 
much less of these troubles. I have no disposition to go into abstract propositions. 
We are meeting at this time an exceptional, phenomenal condition of affairs. We 
have an unusual and exceptional price paid for labor, which is, in my judgment, 
beyond all wisdom. If I cared to do so, I could mention facts which would show 
how absurd these conditions of affairs are, and how frequently and how naturally 
they follow special legislation. 

Mr. Kelley. State wherein the absurdity of the prices which we pay to 
labor consists. 

Mr. Morris. That demands, perhaps, an extended answer, and is also an ab- 
stract proposition which I do not feel competent to answer, except so far as my 
individual convictions go. 

Mr. Kelley. That is what we want. 

Mr. Morris. Because it establishes, first of all, a basis for legislation, and 
because all admit that is a very dangerous thing in this country. It establishes 
a basis for legislation, because in all the debates that take place in Congress 



154 SPEECHES AND ADDRESSES OF WILLIAM McKINLEY. 



we shall have brought up to us this illustration, how magnificently American 
labor is paid [the free traders do not like this form of discussion] — we shall have 
brought up to us the fact that we pay American labor 200 or 300 per cent more 
than is paid to the pauper labor of Europe. These will be established as prece- 
dents to form the basis of many arguments. You will naturally see that the con- 
dition is an exceptional condition, an unhealthy condition. Another very serious 
difficulty about it, and which I think an absurdity, is that it is the creation of an 
additional obstacle to anything like an uniformly just price for labor, when nor- 
mal conditions exist, because, these men, receiving (as I understand they are re- 
ceiving) a large advance over their average compensation, will not be content, 
when the conditions of the market readjust themselves, to accept a reduction of 
wages ; and anything in the shape of economy will be repugnant to them. That 
is another reason why I think the condition unfortunate. Manufacturers are cre- 
ating for themselves an obstacle which in the future will be a severe trial to them. 

On the other hand, Mr. Thomas Williams, a workingman who 
appeared before the Committee, said : 

He had been asked to come here and state how the workingmen looked at 
the matter of the proposed tariff reduction, and how it affected workingmen. 
He was aware that it was often said that the tariff upon imported goods was of no 
benefit to the workingmen. He was not a public speaker, and had never been 
accustomed to anything of the sort. He worked in the mill and earned his own 
living by boiling or puddling, and he thought he knew something whereof he 
spoke. He happened to have been born on the other side of the Atlantic, and he 
had worked in an iron mill in England for some time, so that he could tell the 
Committee from his personal experience how the matter was in free-trade Eng- 
land, and how it was in America. He had worked in England five years in what 
was known as the Dowlais works. He had been puddling there for five years, and 
the wages which had been paid to him were about 5s. Qd. a ton, or at the rate of 
$1.25 for puddling iron. And even at that the men did not get very steady 
work. At the end of the week, when they got their pay and paid out of it for 
their living, there was not very much left for themselves. He was aware that it 
was often said that living was cheaper in England than in this country, but he de- 
nied that statement. He had lived or lodged (as it was called there), paying so 
much a week for his room and letting the landlady buy his food for him. He 
did not live there as workingmen lived in this country. For instance, in the 
morning when he got up to go to work he got a cup of tea and a piece of bread 
and butter. At dinner time he got perhaps a little meat, but not always. He 
generally managed to eat meat at dinner three or four times a week, but never 
except at dinner. In the evening, for tea, as it is called, he sometimes got bread 
and butter, and if he wanted to be extravagant he might eat an egg or two, but 
that was accounted a great extravagance. The women earned in the Dowlais 
works about nine pence a day, or eighteen cents. They were employed in unload- 
ing coal and in throwing coal out of the cars, and otherwise doing the coarse work 
of men. If one of them got a shilling a day it was considered good wages. 

He contrasted the condition of affairs in that country under free trade with the 
condition of things in America ; and what did he find ? He found that the pud- 
dler or the boiler in this country was paid |5.50 a ton. He was aware that in 



THE MORRISON TARIFF BILL. 155 

some parts of the country men were working for less than that, but in Pittsburg 
and west of Pittsburg they were receiving $5.50 a ton for puddling ; and what 
was the result? The men in the old country got only $1.25 per day at the high- 
est average, while here they got $3.25 or $3.50 a day. It occurred to him, as an 
American citizen, that it was not right for American lawmakers to go to work 
and say to the men who had left England and come to this country with the in- 
tention of benefiting their own condition that they must now compete with that 
same system of labor which they had in England. He ventured to say (and he 
thought the facts would bear him out) that if the proposed tariff were enacted 
into a law the time was not far distant (if workmen had any work at all here) 
that they would have to compete with English labor and would have to live just 
as workmen lived in the Old Country. As an American citizen he objected to 
that. He did not believe that the workingmen of America should be compelled 
to compete with the pauper labor, or the comparatively pauper labor, of England 
or of any part of Europe. He had a somewhat extensive acquaintance with 
workingmen in that country. At the Dowlais works, where he had worked, there 
were employed altogether about 15,000 men, including the iron-ore miners, coal 
miners, the blast-furnace men, and the men who worked in the mills. And of all 
that number he did not know more than two or three men who owned their own 
homes. 

Said Mr. A. C. White, another workingmau : 

He had come to request that the pending measure be not passed, believing 
that it would not only injure the workingmen, but the public at large. He be- 
lieved that at the present time any tariff legislation would be injui'ious to the best 
interests of the country. The workingmen protested against further action being 
taken in the matter until the tariff bill of last winter should have been suffi- 
ciently tried. It was yet an experiment, and it was not known whether that bill 
would be for good or for evil. A great many of the workingmen held that the 
tariff legislation of last winter was unnecessary, uncalled for, and unwise. They 
believed that this country should have a good protective tariff for various reasons. 
The workingmen of this country did not desire to be brought down to the level 
of English workingmen. They believed that workingmen, being American citi- 
zens, were entitled to all the rights and privileges belonging to them. They had 
a right to live decently and respectably, and to be able to clothe and educate their 
children, to send them to college and fit them to be members of Congress and 
Senators if need be. The workingmen were part of the people, and they believed 
that legislation should be for the benefit of the people as a whole. 

Said Mr. D. T, Williams, another workingman : 

The impression seemed to have gained ground that manufacturers who came 
here came all the time for their own benefit merely. He wanted to impress upon 
the Committee the fact that it would be a benefit to the workingmen as well as to 
their employers to let the tariff remain as it is, and not to lower it, because if the 
tariff were lowered their wages would be lowered on the 1st of June next. 

The officers of the Amalgamated Iron and Steel Association made 
like statements, enforcing them with facts and figures ; and I notice 
11 



156 SPEECHES AND ADDRESSES OP WILLIAM McKINLEY. 

by the public press that a few days ago the officers of one of the 
leading labor organizations of the country met in the city of Pitts- 
burg, as is the rule of their order, to agree upon the rates of wages 
to be submitted to their employers for the ensuing year, and after 
discussion agreed upon a schedule of prices to be insisted upon, pro- 
vided the Morrison Bill was not enacted into law ; and if it was, then 
they would be compelled to submit lower rates. The workingmen 
themselves, without exception, recognize the inevitable reduction of 
the wages of labor under the operation of this bill. The reduction 
of labor in any branch of industry, or the diminution of the power to 
employ labor, leads to a reduction in the labor price in every field of 
employment. Not only do the workmen recognize this hard fact, 
but the manufacturers as well. Said Mr. Hewitt, in his speech on 
March 26th last : 

Now comes the question, How can you make manufactures grow? How can 
you enlarge their area ? 

You must therefore cheapen cost. How can you cheapen the cost of manu- 
factures? In only one of three ways. The cost of manufactures consists in 
capital, labor, and materials. 

Can you cheapen capital ? To-day capital is cheaper in the United States 
than in any other country in the world. 

Can you cheapen labor ? Where is the man who is going to run next fall for 
Congress who will get up here and say he will advocate- any policy which will 
reduce the wages of labor ? 

Then you are brought down by the very necessities of the case to cheapen 
raw materials. Now, how can you cheapen raw materials? Only by removing 
the duties which press upon them. And when you have taken the duties off raw 
materials you have protected the manufacturer, because he can produce his ware 
cheaper ; you have protected the laborer, because the necessity for reducing his 
wages, which otherwise would exist, is avoided. 

But this bill does not give the raw materials required by the gen- 
tleman from New York [Mr. Hewitt], so that the reduction of the 
labor is inevitable to cheapen the cost of production. This conclusion 
can not be avoided under the bill now before us. The difference in 
the cost of labor in other countries and this, which enters into the 
product which competes with ours, must be equalized by the tariffs 
or the higher wages must come down. Mr. Hewitt admits this 
difference. My friend from Illinois [Mr. Morrison] seemed to dis- 
sent a moment ago when I said there was a difference in the rate of 



"b^ 



wages. 



Mr. Morrison. I did not, sir. There is a great difference in the rate of 



wages in some industries, and some difference in all. 



^^ 



THE MORRISON TARIFF BILL. 



157 



I beg the gentleman's pardon. The gentleman from Illinois, in 
view of the statements I have made within the last five minutes, now 
admits there is a difference. I thank him for the frank confession. 

Mr. Morrison. I have never denied it. The gentleman knows he is mis- 
taken. I have admitted it in every speech I ever made in this House. 

I have some of the gentleman's speeches here ; I do not care to go 
into them ; but I have always understood from the gentleman that, 
while there might be some small difference in the wages between the 
two countries, the wages brought more on the other side, would buy 
more of the necessities ; while there might be a little difference in the 
sum total of pay received, there was practically no difference when the 
purchasing power was taken into account. 

Mr. Morrison. That is a different question, and one about which I have 
not spoken. 

Well, if the gentleman never said it, it certainly has been said by 
those who advocate this bill. I would not do him any injustice. I 
know that it has been said over and over again that this difference in 
the cost of labor which we talk about is wholly visionary. 

Our wages are higher here than in any other nation of the world, 
and we are all proud and grateful that it is so. I know it is denied, 
but experience outweighs theories or misleading statistics. One 
thing we do know is, that our work people do not go abroad for 
better wages, and every other nationality comes here for increased 
wages and gets them. The gentleman from New York [Mr. Hewitt] ' 
does not seek to escape this difficulty by a denial, but frankly said, in 
a speech made in the first session of the Forty-seventh Congress : 
" But the difference in wages does exist, and there are branches of 
industry which can not be carried on without an equivalent compen- 
sation in the form of protective duties or of a bounty from the public 
treasury. In Great Britain and the United States the rate of wages 
is on the average about fifty per cent higher here than there." He 
puts it much too low. 

We are confronted with this problem at the very threshold of this 
discussion, and we must meet it. The proposition of the Chairman 
of the Committee on Ways and Means will result in reducing the 
wages of labor or the destruction of many of our most valuable in- 
dustries, and the deprivation of employment to thousands. The one 
or the other alternative must come ; either will be most disastrous, 
and attended by business depression and individual suffering. We 
must not reduce the price paid to labor ; it is already sufficiently low. 



158 SPEECHES AND ADDRESSES OF WILLIAM McKINLEY. 

"We can only prevent it by defeating this bill, and it should be done 
without unnecessary delay. The sooner the better, and remove this 
menace which hangs over all of our industrial life, and thi-eatens the 
comfort and independence of millions of American workingmen. The 
bill strikes down the duty upon wool ; under its provisions the duty 
on wool valued at over twenty-four cents is to be only nine cents per 
pound. The duties under the present law are, on wool valued at thirty 
cents or less, ten cents per pound, and over thirty cents, twelve cents 
per pound. This enormous reduction is proposed in the presence of 
a universal sentiment among the farmers of the United States for an 
increase of duties upon foreign wools, and in the face of Democratic 
assurances in at least one State of the Union (Ohio) that the duties 
should be increased. Great solicitude is displayed by our opponents 
for the farmers of the country. And yet in this case, where they can 
be directly benefited by a protective duty, it is proposed to wipe it 
out. They are rich in professions to this great producing class, but 
barren of fulfillment. 

Every one of the leading industries of this country will be in- 
juriously affected by this proposed change, and no man can predict 
the extent of it. The producers of cottons and woolens, of iron, 
steel, and glass, must suffer disastrously if this bill is enacted into law ; 
and the proprietors of these establishments are neither robbers nor 
highwaymen, as the free traders love to characterize them. They 
have been real benefactors, and while some of them have grown 
opulent, in the main they do not represent the rich classes of the 
country. Their entire capital is in active employment. Many of 
them are large borrowers. Your proposed action will affect the values 
of their plants, useless except for the purposes employed, will diminish 
the value of their invested capital, will decrease their sales and the 
ability of their customers to buy, and in many cases result in total over- 
throw and bankruptcy. You can do this, if you will. You have the 
power in this House to accomplish this great wrong ; but let me beg 
of you to pause before you commence the work of destroying a great 
economic system under which the country has grown and prospered 
far in advance of every other nation of the world. A system estab- 
lished by the founders of the Government, recognized by the first 
Congress which ever sat in deliberative council in this Nation, sanc- 
tioned in the second act ever passed by Congress, upheld by our 
greatest statesmen, living or dead, vindicated by great results and 
justified by all our experience, achieving industrial triumphs without 
a parallel in the world's history. Its maintenance is yet essential to 



■■v. 



THE MORRISON TARIFF BILL. 159 

our progress and prosperity. The step proposed is a grave one. Ko 
man on this floor can determine its consequences or predict its results. 
It is a leap in the dark. No interest is pressing it. No National 
necessity demands it. No true American wants it. If it is a party 
necessity to enforce Democratic doctrines and discipline a little seg- 
ment of the party, you can afford to wait, or clear your decks of 
mutineers in some other way ; let the ship be saved, and punish your 
insubordinate associates without endangering great interests tem- 
porarily confided to your care. The interests of this great people 
are higher and greater than the ambitions or interests of any party. 
The free traders have already demonstrated that they are in control 
of the Democratic party, that they are a large majority of that polit- 
ical organization ; but they are happily in the minority in the country. 
They may dictate the policy here by party caucus, they may disturb 
the business of the country while yet in power, but they will not, 
under the policy they are now pursuing, be long permitted to domi- 
nate the popular branch of Congress, happily the only branch of the 
Government which they now control. [Great and continued ap- 
plause.] 



THE WALLACE-McKINLEY CONTEST. 

Speech in the House of Repkesentatives, Forty-eighth 

Congress, May 37, 1884. 

[From the Congressional Becord.] 

The House having under consideration the contested election case of Wallace 
vs. McKinley, Mr. McKinley said — 

Mr. Speaker : I had intended to discuss this controversy in detail 
and with some elaboration ; but two days have been already occupied 
in a most careful and painstaking discussion of all the propositions 
involved in this contest, and owing to the lateness of the hour and 
my desire that this case may be concluded to-night, I shall content 
myself with occupying not to exceed five or ten minutes. It would 
be useless for me within that time to undertake to review the testi- 
mony in the record or the law which should govern all of the ques- 
tions involved. I only ask from this House, the majority of which is 
opposed to me politically, to administer in this case the law and the 
precedents which they have always administered in the past, and with 
those precedents determine whether the contestant or the contestee 
has a majority of the votes in the Eighteenth Ohio district. Follow- 
ing the precedents long ago established by the Democrats in former 
Congresses and in other cases, and conceding to the contestant all he 
claims and much more than is allowed him by a Committee of his 
party friends, and my majority and election to the Forty-eighth Con- 
gress is as certain and sure as that of any gentleman occupying a seat 
in this House. 

I rise more particularly to say — and indeed it is about all I desire 
to say — that I claim nothing upon technicalities. I would not if I 
could retain my seat one hour upon a mere mistake or technicality or 
inadvertence of election officers. And I say to this House, that if it 
be necessary to find that I am entitled to my seat to throw out the ten 
votes in Carroll County which upon the face of the returns appear 
to be an error in the count against the contestant — if to give me my 



THE WALLACE-McKINLEY CONTEST. 161 

seat you must invoke those ten votes, and deduct them from the con- 
testant, then I do not want my seat in this House. Although there 
is no legal proof that this is not an error, and although my friends 
have argued that part of the case in the light of the law, I desire here 
to say to the majority and to the minority, if it becomes necessary to 
deduct those ten votes from the contestant to give me the seat, then I 
do not want it and would not have it. 

I desire to say another thing, Mr. Speaker, and that is, if my right 
to a seat in this House depends upon the rejection of the seven votes 
which appear upon the face of the returns as cast for " John H. Wal- 
lace," " W. W. Wallace," or « W. H. Wallace," no matter what the 
law in its strictness might hold, then I do not want my seat on the 
floor of this House. For although there is no testimony whatever to 
show that these names, differing from the name of the contestant as 
they do, the names of different persons designating different indi- 
viduals, are entitled to designate the contestant, yet in my judgment 
the citizens of the Eighteenth district who polled those seven votes 
intended that they should be cast and counted for Jonathan H. Wal- 
lace, the contestant in this controversy, and I want them, notwith- 
standing the absence of any proof to that effect, added to his vote, 
and the will of the voter, as I believe it, thus subserved. 

Nor, Mr. Speaker, do I make any point as to the odd spelling of 
the names found in the ballot-box in Fairfield Township to the num- 
ber of eleven — the Wolac, the Walce, the Waal. If this House shall 
decide, if the judgment and consciences of members on this floor 
shall determine, that that recount is of value and shall have weight in 
this controversy, then I make no point that the voters misspelled or 
failed to spell properly the name of the contestant. 

So I say, Mr. Speaker, that in all this controversy — I say to my 
friends on this side, I say to my friends on the other side, I say to my 
political opponents on the other side, that I invoke no technicality or 
legal quibble to retain my seat in this House. But I insist that, con- 
ceding every one of these votes, conceding the entire twenty-three 
votes which appear upon the face of the return, conceding that there 
was no error in Carroll County, and even conceding the eleven votes 
in Fairfield Township, and every other claim of the contestant, I still 
have an unquestioned majority of the votes cast in the Eighteenth 
district of Ohio on the 10th of October, 1882, and am justly entitled 
to retain my seat. 

Now let me for a single moment revert to the Fairfield township 
recount, for it is a matter in which you are all interested. You will 



162 SPEECHES AND ADDRESSES OF WILLIAM McKINLEY. 

establish a precedent to-day that may be for good or that may be for 
ill — a precedent which may come back to harass you in the future. 
Why, sir, what is a recount ? A recount is counting over again the 
very same ballots that were cast by the voters and found in the box 
the night of the official count. That is what a recount is ; that is 
what a recount means. It is counting again the identical ballots ; 
because if you have not the identical ballots, identical as to names 
and identical as to numbers, then there can be no virtue in a recount. 
Now, how was it with Fairfield Township ? Why, sir, everybody ad- 
mits — the contestant in his brief, the gentleman from New York [Mr. 
Adams], and I believe the gentleman from Georgia [Mr. Turner], the 
Chairman of the Committee on Elections, in their arguments, all ad- 
mit that there were five fewer votes in the box on the night of the 
recount than there were on the night of the official count. Does not 
that destroy the virtue of the recount ? 

There are five ballots gone nobody knows where. Those five bal- 
lots stand unexplained. Nobody undertakes to account for them. 
The very confession that the contents of that box on the day of the 
recount differed from the contents of the box on the night of the offi- 
cial count — that very confession makes a recount absolutely valueless 
and without effect. I beg gentlemen to remember that fact, which is 
sufficient to wholly destroy the pretended recount if there were no 
other discrepancies in the contents of that ballot-box. But in addi- 
tion to that there were four more ballots for the Greenback candidate 
for Congress found in the box on the night of the recount than were 
in it on the official count. There was one less ballot for me found at 
the recount than was given to me by the official count. For whom 
were these five votes cast that were missing? Were they for the con- 
testant ? Were they for the contestee ? One of them evidently was 
for me, because the recount finds one less ballot in that box than the 
judges of the election gave me on the night of the election. Then, in 
addition to that there was one vote that all the witnesses, judges, and 
clerks identify as a ballot with the names of the contestant and con- 
testee both upon it, found in the box on the night of the official 
count, and not found in the box on the night of the recount. So 
that the whole virtue and weight and integrity of the recount was 
destroyed. 

But the distinguished Chairman of the Committee seems to rely 
not so much upon the recount in giving these eleven ballots to the 
contestant as he relies upon the testimony in the case. He says that 
a number of witnesses testified there were ballots in that box not 



THE WALLACE-McKINLEY CONTEST. 1(33 

counted for the contestant. Carpenter puts it from seven to thirteen. 
Now, let me ask the judges on this floor, the men who are to act 
upon this case, shall it be seven or shall it be thirteen ? For the wit- 
ness says there were from seven to thirteen. "Which number will you 
adopt? Mr. Holloway says there were three or four. Shall it be 
three or shall it be four?- You are to be the judges, and how will 
you determine it? Crooks swears there were six ballots in that box 
not counted for Wallace. And so, all the way through, the witnesses 
disagree as to the number, only one of them putting it as high as 
thirteen, and one as low as three. No two of the witnesses agree ; 
and you, gentlemen, are to determine from that kind of testimony how 
many ballots are to be added to the contestant and how many taken 
from the contestee. I submit to you that it would be unsafe, that it 
would be unwise, in any election case to permit such testimony to 
overthrow the solemn findings of the official count. I care not whose 
case it is, to undertake either upon a recount such as I have described, 
or upon the testimony of a character such as I have disclosed, to de- 
termine, as it might in this case, whether the contestant or contestee 
is entitled to a seat on this floor, would be establishing a dangerous 
precedent even as a party necessity. 

In every one of the recounts which we invoke the number of ballots 
found in the box was exactly equal to the number of names on the 
poll sheets. There is no discrepancy whatever, no suspicious or con- 
tradictory circumstances manifest, none raised by the proof. And yet, 
if you will give me the votes shown by the recounts made in accord- 
ance with law, made from boxes kept in strict accordance with the 
statute ; if you will give me the ballots that have not a taint of sus- 
picion upon them, and then take from the contestant the unques- 
tioned illegal votes that were cast for him, giving to him every vote 
that he claims, I will then have a certain and fixed majority as a 
Representative in the Forty-eighth Congress. 

I will not stop to review what my colleague from the Cincinnati 
district [Mr. Follett] has dragged into this case ; I will not rake up 
the fouling dust of the campaign. But I was surprised that the gen- 
tleman, after nearly an hour's discussion of this important case, 
upon which he was to pass as a judge, could give no better reason for 
unseating me than that at some time and somewhere, upon some 
public rostrum, I had declared that I had voted to seat Republicans, 
and that my record for nearly eight years in this House showed that 
I had voted to seat Republicans and to unseat Democrats. I will not 
stop to pay any attention to that sort of argument ; it is beneath the 



164 SPEECHES AND ADDRESSES OF WILLIAM McKINLEY. 

dignity and consideration of a tribunal like this. The record I have 
made in this House upon that and all other questions is a part of our 
public records, and I am not ashamed of nor would I blot out any 
portion of it. [Great applause on the Republican side.] 

Now, Mr. Speaker, that ends all I have to say, for I want the vote 
to be taken and this case to be decided. I thank this House, the 
members on both sides of it, for the attention and courtesy with 
which they have listened to me. [Great applause on the Eepublican 
side.] 



N 



EQUAL SUFFRAGE. 
A Campaign Speech at Ieonton, Ohio, October 1, 1885. 

My Fellow-Citizen's: For the first time in twenty-four years 
we open a campaign in Ohio with the Executive branch of the 
National Government in the hands of our political adversaries. We 
have only one branch of the National Congress under Republican con- 
trol, the Senate of the United States. We can not, before 1888, change 
the Executive, but we can this year insure the continuance of a Re- 
publican Senate, by the election of a Legislature which will not per- 
mit the seat so long and honorably filled by John Sherman to be sur- 
rendered or vacated to another. 

We enter the contest without Executive patronage or power, carry- 
ing our principles to the people, and upon them, and them only, invit- 
ing support. With no control of the offices, with little voice in shap- 
ing the policy of the General Government, with the State administra- 
tion Democratic, we address the citizens of Ohio as they were ad- 
dressed thirty years ago by the fathers of the Republican party, ap- 
pealing to their unprejudiced judgments and inviting their co-opera- 
tion in securing needed reforms and in suppressing the grossest 
wrongs against popular rights. While it is only a State campaign in 
which we are contending, its results will influence National questions, 
and their discussion is therefore as important and pertinent as though 
we were engaged in a great National contest. 

The right to vote is the concern of the whole people, and must be secured at 
all hazards to every citizen in every part of the Republic. 

This is the declaration of the Republican party of Ohio, made at 
its recent State convention, and it represents the convictions and 
moral sense of good men North and South. Free and impartial suf- 
frage in one section of the country is of little value if it be Avithheld, 
denied, or suppressed in another section. An honest expression of 
the will of the people in Ohio is of no avail in a general election, if in 
Georgia and Mississippi no such honest expression is attained. The 



166 SPEECHES AND ADDRESSES OF WILLIAM McKINLEY. 

equality of citizenship at all elections is the bed rock upon which our 
institutions rest, the rock of National safety, and safeguard of the 
future of the Republic. The free enjoyment of the ballot to be cast 
for the party of our choice and for tlie principles in which we believe, 
and to have that ballot correctly counted and returned, is a right that 
should be cheerfully accorded to every citizen in every State of the 
Union ; and if not so accorded by the local authorities then it must 
be enforced by the General Government exercising all its constitu- 
tional powers, and supported and sustained by a firm and enlight- 
ened public sentiment. While the people generally wull subscribe 
to these propositions as right, and as just and desirable, far too 
many, rather than investigate, prefer to acquiesce in the continu- 
ance of a great wrong. Some profess to believe that the discussion 
of this question is reviving the memories of the war, and keeping 
■j alive that unfortunate struggle which was concluded more than 
i twenty years ago. As if we should close our eyes to Southern out- 
rages and view them with supreme serenity, if we would prosper 
I as a people and be united as a Nation ! To my mind this senti- 
ment is not sound in morals ; not a sufficient defense. It neither jus- 
tifies the people of any State in violating the constitutional rights of 
citizenship, nor is it an adequate excuse for the people of other States 
submitting quietly to crimes against free and equal suffrage. 

I have no desire or purpose to reopen a discussion of the war and 
its bloody engagements ; that is of the past, and should remain so. 
The bitterness and resentments of that terrible period have long since 
been effaced ; with them we are not now dealing, but the results of 
the great conflict, which have been embodied in the Constitution of 
the country, are in your keeping, and in that of all patriotic citizens, 
to be forever preserved and enforced. If the guarantees are not admin- 
istered impartially by all to all, it is the business of every good citizen 
to see to their enforcement in letter, spirit, and intent. What the 
public most wants is information and awakening upon this subject. 
The people want to know that substantial rights are denied, freedom 
of political action forbidden, and then a sentiment will be created that 
will find a way to repress the wrong and secure the right. Let me 
ask your patient consideration of a few facts in connection with the 
recent election, touching this question. 

Take a number of States in the South and contrast them with 
States of the North that are equal in population and representation 
in Congress. I have selected the following, for the purpose of illus- 
tration : Alabama, Arkansas, Florida, Georgia, Louisiana, Mississippi, 



EQUAL SUFFRAGE. 167 

North Carolina, South Carolina, Tennessee, Texas, and Virginia, in the 
South, having a population by the last Federal census of 12,990,246, 
with eighty-four Representatives in Congress ; and Iowa, Michigan, 
New Jersey, New York, and Ohio, in the North, with a population of 
12,673,001, and having eighty-four Representatives in Congress. 
The Constitution provides (Article XIV, section 3) that — 

Representatives shall be apportioned among the several States according to 
their respective numbers, counting the whole number of persons in each State, 
excluding Indians not taxed. 

The present apportionment is one Representative for every 154,000 
people, counting white and black. In 1884, at the last Congressional 
election, the Southern States I have named polled for Representatives 
to Congress 1,855,483 votes, while the five Northern States polled 
2,989,675 votes ; that is, 1,134,192 more votes were cast for the same 
number of Congressmen in the North than in the South. In other 
words, it took nearly 3,000,000 votes to elect eighty-four Congressmen 
in the five States of the North, and less than 2,000,000 to elect a like 
number in eleven States in the South. Eleven hundred thousand 
votes in these eleven Southern States were either not cast, or if cast 
were not counted and returned. 

This vast number of votes, sufficient to have changed the results 
in several of the States, either voluntarily or by coercion, remained 
away from the polls in a fierce Presidential contest, or ii present vot- 
ing, their ballots were unrecorded and uncounted. All this in the 
interest of " peace, reconciliation, and harmony between the different 
sections of the Union," declare the sentimentalists of the North and 
the ballot suppressors of the South ! 

The Democratic vote in the main was out in full force, and always 
when required, and in every case was fully counted and returned. 
These Southern States, whose official election returns I am examin- 
ing, had by the Federal census of 1880 a white population of 7,622,- 
852 and a colored population of 5,360,298, and upon this united 
population they have apportioned to them eighty-four Representatives 
in Congress. The colored people are more than forty-one per cent 
of the whole, and thirty-five members of Congress are secured by 
their population alone. Yet only two colored men were declared 
elected last year to the Forty-ninth Congress, and they will not retain 
their seats if their Democratic opponents have filed notices of con- 
test, which they invariably do, and these 5,000,000 of colored people 
will then be without a single Representative of their own race to 
speak for them in the American Congress. 



168 SPEECHES AND ADDRESSES OF WILLIAM McKINLEY. 

There is some reason for this remarkable condition of affairs. It 
is neither normal nor spontaneous. It can not be possible that forty- 

'■ one per cent of the population voluntarily consents to be unrepre- 
sented or basely misrepresented. It would naturally and logically 
assert itself, if not prevented by force or fraud. Even if it did not 
always select men of its own race to represent it, it would unite with 
the white Republicans in choosing white men who would voice its 
political sentiments and stand for the principles with which it is 
identified. But we look in vain for any manifestations in that direc- 

■ tion. Out of eighty-four Congressmen chosen from these States we 
find but six white Republicans who have been returned by the election 
boards as elected. There are tens of thousands of white men in these 
States who are fearless Republicans, willing to serve the party, and 
who have fought its battles year after year against fearful odds ; but 
these, with the large colored vote, which in some of these States is in 
the majority, only secure eight Republican Representatives to the 
next House. These facts make one thing manifest, that suffrage in 
the South is suppressed, and that the theft of the ballot, the free 
enjoyment of which is the most sacred of all our civil rights, is openly 
and glaringly practiced, and that the States in which this crime pre- 
vails will not remedy the evil nor punish the crime. The white and 
colored voters residing in these States who are Republicans are fairly 
entitled to one half of their eighty-four Congressmen, and would 
secure them at any fair election, such as we hold in the North. In- 
deed, if it had not been prevented by force or fraud, we would now 
have forty-two Representatives instead of eight — enough to change 
the political complexion of the next House and give it to the Repub- 
licans, to whom it rightfully belongs, under any fair, free, and unre- 

' strained expression of the people. But that is not all : the States 
which have the eighty-four Representatives also have one hundred 
and six Electors, whose votes in the Electoral College select the Presi- 
dent and Vice-President of the United States. 

The Constitution declares that each State shall be entitled to such 
number of Presidential electors as is equal to the whole number of 
Senators and Representatives to which the State may be entitled in 
Congress. In the eleven Southern States the voting population in 
1884 was fully 3,000,000, the colored vote at least 1,200,000 ; and yet 
with the white Republican vote of those States, which in Louisiana, 
South Carolina, and Virginia is quite large, Blaine received but 777,000 
votes. The colored vote alone, if it had been all out and voting for 
him, would have equalled Cleveland's entire vote in the eleven States, 



EQUAL SUFFRAGE. 1(39 

and with the white Republican vote would have greatly exceeded it. 
If the Democratic vote was not all out, it was for the sole reason that 
it was not deemed necessary ; the majorities would be large enough 
without it. In Louisiana, Mississippi, and South Carolina the colored 
population exceeds the white by many thousands. 

In Louisiana the white population is 454,954 

" " colored " 483,655 

Colored in excess of white 28,701 

In Mississippi the white population is 479,398 

" " colored " 650,291 

Colored in excess of white 170,893 

In South Carolina the white population is 391,105 

" " " colored " 604,332 

Colored in excess of white 213,227 

With these figures it is too apparent to need argument that in 
these three States if the voters were permitted to cast their ballots 
according to their convictions each would be overwhelmingly Repub- 
lican. Yet all three States were returned for Cleveland at the elec- 
tion in 1884. He "carried" Louisiana by over 16,000 majority, 
Mississippi by 33,000, and South Carolina by 48,000, thus securing 
twenty-six electoral votes, which, if the popular will had been free, 
would have been given to Blaine, and secured him the election by 
fifteen majority in the Electoral College. 

Let me give you further demonstration. Take the State of Ohio : 
It has a population of 3,198,062, and sends twenty-one Representa- 
tives to Congress. Take the three Southern States, Alabama, Louisi- 
ana, and Mississippi, with a population of 3,334,048, which united 
send twenty-one Representatives to Congress. In October, 1884, 
Ohio cast in the aggregate for the candidates fop Congress 781,011 
votes, while the three States just enumerated in November, 1884, cast 
only 344,322 votes — not half as many. They polled 436,000 votes less 
than were cast in Ohio to elect the same number of Representatives. 
The colored population of these States is in round numbers 140,000 
in excess of the white, and yet the Democrats elected, or rather se- 
cured, twenty out of the twenty-one Representatives to Congress, gen- 
erously giving the Republicans one solitary member. Again, South 
Carolina under the Congressional apportionment is entitled to seven 
members of Congress, and New Jersey, with about an equal popula- 
tion, is also entitled to the same number. The vote for Congress- 
men in New Jersey last year was 260,134, and in South Carolina only 



170 SPEECHES AND ADDRESSES OP WILLIAM McKINLEY. 

90,689. We polled last year in two districts — Judge Ezra B. Taylor's, 
the Nineteenth, the old Garfield district, and the Twentieth, which I 
have the honor to represent — within 6,000 votes of the entire Con- 
gressional vote of South Carolina. That is, 84,000 votes elected two 
Representatives in Ohio, and 90,000 selected seven Representatives in 
South Carolina. 

Let me state another fact of great significance : The States of Ala- 
bama, Louisiana, Mississippi, and South Carolina had under the cen- 
sus of 1870 a joint population of 3,257,435, and in 1872 the Repub- 
licans polled 316,400 votes. By the census of 1880 they had a popula- 
tion of 4,329,625, and in 1884 the Republican vote was only 171,033. 
The population increased between 1870 and 1880 fully twenty-five 
per cent, and the Republican vote diminished nearly fifty per cent. 
This diminished Republican vote has not gone over to the Demo- 
cratic party. You can not account for it in that way. What is the 
answer to this exceptional condition of affairs, this outrage upon the 
rights of the people ? An outrage not only upon those who person- 
ally suffer, but upon every honest voter elsewhere. It is not wholly 
a question of the equality of the white and colored voter of the South, 
but of the equality of the white voter in the North with the white 
voter in the South. Shall the vote of a citizen of the South, whether 
he be Union or Confederate, count twice as much as the vote of a 
citizen of the North ? 

It will not do to say to these startling figures, " The war is over," 
that is not a sufficient answer ; nor will it lessen the force of these 
facts to reply, " You are waving the bloody shirt." All such re- 
joinders are inadequate to quiet public conscience and stifle public 
discussion. We are not talking of what occurred during the war, or 
immediately after, but what took place only last year, and what is of 
official record anA can not be denied. Either these men are enti- 
tled to vote, and to enjoy all the privileges of citizenship to the 
fullest extent, or else the Constitution and laws are a dead letter, and 
the Government powerless to protect its citizens in the exercise of 
their constitutional rights. They must have these rights, or we 
must acknowledge that free government is a failure. If all this be 
true, this plain rehearsal of official facts, the war not only is over, 
but it would seem to have determined nothing, to have settled noth- 
ing. Donelson, Antietam, Vicksburg, and Gettysburg accomplished 
nothing but the needless slaughter of brave men ; the surrender at 
Appomattox was an idle ceremony; and the Democratic declaration at 
Chicago, in 1864, that " the war is a failure," is painfully true. Are 



EQUAL SUFFRAGE. 171 

we ready to admit it? I trust in God that we are not! The settle- 
ments of the war must stand as the irreversible judgment of his- 
tory, the inflexible decree of this Nation of free men. They must 
not be shaken, they must not be misinterpreted, they must not be 
weakened nor shorn of their force by any subterfuge or device under 
any pretext or for any purpose, but be acquiesced in freely and fully 
without reservation, avoidance, or evasion. It must not be equality 
and justice in the written law only, but equality and justice in theu 
law's administration, alike affoi'ded in every part of the Republic, and 
literally secured to every citizen thereof. 

The war is over, the flag of the lost and wicked cause went 
down at Appomattox more than twenty years ago ; but that does not 
prevent us from insisting that all that was gained in war shall not 
be lost in peace. The contest is over — we pray never to be re- 
sumed ; but that which was secured by so much blood, suffering, 
and sacrifice must be cheerfully accorded by every patriotic citizen. 
The struggle cost too much human life and public treasure to be 
apologized for, or frittered away, under any pretext. The results ad- 
mit of no compromise. The standard of patriotism and the respect for 
law must not be lowered ; the hideous specter of a wicked conspiracy 
need not be veiled. Patriotism and obedience to the Coustitution,^ 
the old as well as the new, must be kept to the forefront. Weak 
and sentimental gush must not be permitted to conceal disobedience 
of the law, or protect the flagrant violators of the rights of citizen- 
ship. The country's enemies were forgiven — long ago, liberal and 
magnanimous pardon was extended to them. Mutual forbearance 
should be cultivated, honorable concessions were made upon both 
sides, but the freedom and political equality of all men must be fully 
and honorably recognized wherever our flag floats. 

You may ask, "What is the remedy?" A complete remedy may 
be difficult for the moment, it may not be apparent at once, but 
among free men a remedy is always found against oppression, and 
some one always rises great and wise enough to discover an unfailing 
remedy to correct what the consciences of a free people have come to 
condemn and abhor. Fortunately, those who were in charge of pub- 
lic affairs during the Reconstruction period provided a partial solu- v 
tion. The second section of the Fourteenth Amendment to the Con- 
stitution provides: 

But when the right to vote at any election for the choice of Electors for 
President and Vice-President of the United States, Representatives in Congress, 
the Executive and Judicial Officers of a State, or the Members of the Legislature 
12 



172 SPEECHES AND ADDRESSES OP WILLIAM McKINLEY. 

thereof, is denied to any of the male inhabitants of said State, being twenty-one 
years of age and citizens of the United States, or in any way abridged, except for 
participation in rebellion or other crime, the basis of representation therein shall 
be reduced in the proportion which the fiumber of such male citizens shall bear to 
the whole number of male citizens twenty-one years of age in such State. 

Here is full power to abridge the representation in Congress and 
in the Electoral College in proportion as the right of suffrage is de- 
nied or abridged in the several States. It is a power resting in Con- 
gress to see to it that in every State where voters are denied the right 
of participation in elections for any cause except for crime or rebel- 
lion, the number of Congressmen and Electors shall be reduced to 
the precise extent which such disfranchisement bears to the whole 
population and in the same proportion. It distinctly declares that no 
State shall count its entire population for the purposes of represen- 
tation and to increase its political power and then deny any part there- 
of full participation and free choice at elections. 

If Congress will curtail the power of these States, if it will reduce 
their representation numerically, they will soon come to respect the 
constitutional rights of their fellow-citizens if from no higher motive 
than the selfish desire for power. As the States of the South are 
now controlled and the elections conducted, they have more political 
power than in the days of slavery, when they owned the men who 
are now under the law equal and independent citizens. They then 
counted a slave three fifths of a man in securing Eepresentatives in 
Congress and in the Electoral College. Now they count the old slaves 
as full men — no fraction of a man for the purposes of Congressional 
apportionment — but they are as politically barred from the free ex- 
pression of opinion as when they were only chattels. If the immo- 
rality of slavery quickened public conscience and advanced public 
sentiment to a moral height which led to its complete overthrow, 
what will the present equally abhorrent and immoral situation accom- 
plish ? 

There was found some palliation for slavery. It was recog- 
nized in the Constitution, and came down as an inheritance from the 
fathers ; but no excuse either of law or tradition can hide this new 
slavery. No palliation can be found for the wicked and willful sup- 
pression of the ballot, and unless it be checked it will sap the very 
foundations of the Kepublic and destroy the only nation approxi- 
mating self-government. This question, my fellow-citizens, is at the 
foundation ; it underlies all other political problems. Nothing can 
be permanently settled until the right of every citizen to participate 



EQUAL SUFFRAGE. 173 

equally ia our State and National affairs is unalterably fixed. Tariff, 
finance, civil service, and all other political and party questions should 
remain open and unsettled until every citizen who has a constitu- 
tional right to share in their determination is free to enjoy it. 

It will not do to say that these outrages are in another section of 
the country and far removed from the people of Ohio. We are as 
much affected by them as though they were committed in our very 
midst. They are growing in extent and enormity every year. Acqui- 
escence will only broaden and extend them. We witnessed in Cincin- 
nati last year a similar outrage. One hundred and fifty- two colored 
citizens were dragged from their homes at midnight preceding the 
election, without excuse, provocation, or warrant, incarcerated in a 
prison, and held until the polls closed. Good and respectable citizens 
whose right to vote was unquestioned were imprisoned without 
charge, for the sole reason that they were Eepublicans and on the fol- 
lowing day would in all probability exercise their undoubted right of 
franchise. Such an invasion of the rights of American citizens in a 
Northern city must shock the moral sense of our people, even if the 
scenes at Copiah in Mississippi and Danville in Virginia are passed 
by without serious thought or protest. You can not confine these 
outrages ; you must banish them. The Democratic police officer who 
led in this un-American proceeding was indicted, convicted upon his 
own confession, openly pleading guilty, sentenced by the Federal 
Court, and then pardoned out by a Democratic President upon the 
recommendation of Governor Hoadly. From his prison cell, with a 
Presidential pardon as his credentials, he was admitted to the recent 
Democratic State Convention to aid his benefactor to a renomination, 
and he will be found this year joining the Democratic chorus in its 
song of " peace, harmony, and good will between all sections of our 
common country." 

But the contest for an untrammeled ballot will go on. The friends 
of equal citizenship will not relax their efforts, but multiply in ear- 
nestness and endeavor, until everywhere within the National jurisdic- 
tion every citizen, high or low, native or naturalized, black or white, 
shall exercise fully and freely without fear or favor his right to vote 
and to have his vote honestly counted and correctly returned. 

The platform of the Ohio Democracy this year, while indorsing the 
administration of Mr. Cleveland in general terms, has not a word 
commendatory of his efforts to execute the civil-service law enacted by 
the Republican party. It is an open secret that such approval was 
intentionally omitted, and had there been any declaration upon the 



174 SPEECHES AND ADDRESSES OP WILLIAM McKINLEY. 

subject it would have been one of condemnation. The Democrats of 
Ohio are not now, and never have been, in favor of civil service re- 
form or the present civil service law. Their Eepresentatives in Con- 
gress opposed the enactment of the law, and it has not grown in favor 
with them since. " The Democratic convention in the city of Cleve- 
land demanded its open violation in the more speedy removal of Repub- 
lican officials and the appointment of their partisan spoilsmen. The 
Democrats of Stark County ventured to assure Mr. Cleveland that he 
would have the favor of Divine Providence by more speedily " turn- 
ing the rascals out," and so all over the State the county conventions, 
more frank but less discreet, openly disapproved of Mr. Cleveland's 
attempt to obey a plain public statute. 

\ With little confidence in the professions of the present adminis- 
tration touching civil service reform, it yet has my best wishes and 
shall have my earnest suj^port in all its efforts to accomplish true 
and genuine reformation. Whatever Mr. Cleveland's individual pur- 
poses may be, I have never believed he could rise higher than his 
party or do anything else but register its will. The party is intent 
upon spoils and little else. It has no policy of a National character ; 
it has few aspirations higher than patronage. It has shown itself 
incapable of dealing with great questions, and it has never measured 
up to the demands of the times or the emergency. Its professions of 
reform are insincere and hypocritical, and under the false cry of 
" offensive partisanship " it is doing what it has not the manliness to 
do openly and aboveboard. It does this by talebearing and false wit- 
ness of neighbor against neighbor, at the expense of an open, frank, 
and dignified course. 

For a pronounced and emphasized Civil Service Administration 
the present executive department has been peculiarly unfortunate in 
its appointments. In some instances its civil favors have been be- 
stowed upon criminals awaiting trial or serving out their sentences ; 
in others they have fallen upon men who have but recently served the 
State, against their will, and by the verdict of a jury ; and there are 
still others where the law failed to convict. Driven distracted after 
such painful experience, it is not to be wondered at that the Presi- 
dent, at last, in sheer desperation, revoked one appointment — that of 
one of the chief conspirators in the murder of Matthews in Missis- 
sippi — and declared that he must draw the line somewhere, and he 
would do it at murder. 

Upon the great question of the tariff, the Ohio Democrats are 
this year singularly silent in their platform. With the threat openly 



EQUAL SUFFRAGE. 175 

proclaimed by the revenue reformers headed by Colonel Morrison, the 
author of the " horizontal " tariff bill in the last Congress, that the 
House that assembles next December, and which is overwhelmingly 
Democratic, will reduce the duties upon foreign products and mer- 
chandise, they make no sign of protest. They offer no opposition ; 
they enter no appeal for the maintenance of our industries. They 
reaffirm the free trade National platform, made at Chicago last 
year, thus assuming full fellowship with the free-trade majority of 
their party. They discard the teachings of Converse and Randall 
and accept the leadership of Hurd and Carlisle. They abandon the 
American laborer and espouse the cause of the British manufacturer. 
They send cheer to the free traders of Europe and our own country, 
and despondency to our struggling industries and their now poorly 
employed artisans. Hereafter no help can be expected from the 
Ohio Democracy to maintain protective duties. 

The wool grower of Ohio, whose special friend and champion 
they have professed to be, can find no comfort in their platform this 
year. They have turned their backs upon him. Two years ago they 
demanded the restoration of the wool duty of 1867, and repeated it 
last year. This year, with a Democratic House strong enough to give 
the wool growers full relief, they make no such demand, and fail even 
to enter a respectful request for suitable relief. 

They do say in the eighth blank that " they have always been and 
are now the party of the agricultural and wool growing interests," when 
they know that in the entire history of National legislation they have 
never framed or passed a law in the interest of this large and growing 
class. They never, in all the years of their power in the National 
Government, gave protection to American wool growers against their 
foreign competitors. They stood almost solidly against the enactment 
of the wool duty of 18G7 ; they voted as a party, with some individual 
exceptions, for its reduction and repeal in the Forty-seventh Con- 
gress. They sought through their leaders repeatedly, from 1867 to 
1883, to destroy the wool tariff of 1867. They voted to scale down 
the duty still lower in the Forty-eighth Congress. They defeated the 
Converse Bill by an overwhelming majority in the House, with its 
seventy-six Democratic majority, which proposed the restoration of 
the duty of 1867. They did not stop here ; they defeated its author 
as a candidate for renomi nation to Congress only last year. They 
deceived the wool growers of Ohio in the campaign of 1883, and won 
thousands of them over to vote for Hoadly under a solemn compact 
that the old duty should be put back, and with the power in their 



176 SPEECHES AND ADDRESSES OP WILLIAM McKINLEY. 

hands refused to keep their pledge. Yet with this record and these 
facts against them they have the hardihood to declare that they are 
now and always have been the friend of the wool growing and agri- 
cultural interests of the country ! The profession is shallow pretense, 
and at this late day can deceive no one. 

They congratulate the country upon " the revival of prosperity." 
Have you seen it— have you realized it? God knows I wish it was 
here, in abounding fullness. No party will welcome it more cheer- 
fully, or aid its coming more zealously, than the Kepublican ; but a 
Democratic platform will not secure it, and where it exists only in 
the platitudes of a political party it will not fill your homes with 
contentment nor bless your families with a plenteous table or even a 
frugal board. 

They congratulate the country further upon " the increase in the 
value of property," as demonstrating the beneficence of Democratic 
principles. If this be so, that the value of property has enhanced, 
can it be counted as cause for genuine congratulation ? 

With an increase in the value of property and no corresponding 
increase in the value of labor, can it be said that an era is reached so 
general in its benefits as to be the subject of party congratulation? 
If property has advanced in price, the wages of labor surely have not. 
The advance of the one without the equal upward march of the other 
is neither helpful nor encouraging, but tends only to one end, that of 
making " the rich richer and the poor poorer." If property has risen 
in value rents have also risen, and the price of money must be higher. 
Everything, declares the platform, is beneficently rising, but labor and 
muscle. They do not even maintain the old prices, but are gradually 
and steadily diminishing them. The capacity of labor to buy is cur- 
tailed by reduced wages, the property in the hands of the noupro- 
ducer leaps beyond the laborer's power to purchase, and over this con- 
dition of affairs the Democratic party invites us to rejoice and give 
humble thanks to the wisdom and beneficence of a Democratic ad- 
ministration. I see in this alleged situation nothing to rejoice over, 
nothing to be thankful for, but rather much to be deplored and cor- 
rected. The value of property should always be measured by the coat 
of labor in producing it. Labor should be the foundation of all values, 
and it is a shocking political code which teaches that prosperity is at 
hand when property is incommensurate ly higher than labor. They 
should keep apace, and the former adjust itself to the latter. It is a 
wretched condition for any country when " lands are dear and human 
blood so cheap." 



EQUAL SUFFRAGE. 1Y7 

The Democratic press and the leaders of the Democratic party do 
not approve of the Republican platform made at Springfield. This 
is not to be wondered at. It is not a Democratic platform. If it was 
it never would have been adopted by a Republican convention. It 
was made as an expression of Republican principles and purposes, and 
there is nothing in it harmonious with Democratic ideas or Demo- 
cratic tendencies. It is wholly Republican, and evidences the courage 
of Republican conviction and the determined spirit of the party. It 
is criticised in the same spirit, and in much the same phrase, as was 
the Republican platform of 1856, and every subsequent official utter- 
ance of the party since. The Republicans never made a party decla- 
ration which was not severely denounced by the opposition. It has 
always stood as the party of resistance. Right or wrong, it has always 
resisted. It was as bitterly opposed to our platforms in war as it is 
and has been to our platforms in peace. It is the old objection with 
no added force, no novelty of expression, and will frighten no one. 
What is wrong with the Republican platform that they so antago- 
nize it ? 

It declares for equal political rights and their free and full exer- 
cise ; for a protective tariff which shall promote manufactures and 
give profitable employment to labor. It is for a system of general 
education, supported by the public revenues, wherever the same is 
needed ; it favors the establishment of a National Bureau of Industry ; 
it is for such legislation as will produce a better understanding be- 
tween labor and capital and secure to each a just share of the joint 
profit. It is for the restitution of the wool duty of 1867 ; and for the 
continuance of the civil-service law with such amendments as will 
better promote this wise reform inaugurated by the Republican party. 
It declares for the repeal of the limitation contained in the Pension 
Arrears law of 1878, thus placing all disabled soldiers and their 
widows upon an equal footing. It is for the best attainable legisla- 
tion under the present Constitution for the regulation and taxation 
of the liquor traffic. 

In this summary of Republican belief, to what do you object, my 
Democratic friend ? Where is it wrong ? Point it out, that we may 
meet you in open discussion. You will not do it. Your objections 
are general, and apply to the whole platform. You find in it noth- 
ing to commend — everything to condemn ; of course you do. We 
would not be compelled to announce our position upon these ques- 
tions and then battle for them but for the Democracy. It is because 
they are against these great principles that the Republican platform 



178 SPEECHES AND ADDRESSES OF WILLIAM McKINLEY. 

is made. It is because of their reactionary policy and destructive 
measures, that the existence and success of the Republican party are 
so essential to the welfare and safety of the country. No political 
party but the Democratic would have lowered the flag to honor 
the late Secretary of the Interior, Jacob Thompson, the defaulter 
and conspirator ; no other party would have desired to appoint un- 
reconstructed rebels to office. No other party would have promised 
the wool growers adequate relief, and then refused to grant it. 
Only the Democratic party would have pledged itself to abolish the 
contract labor system in the State penitentiary, and then estab- 
lish a system more odious to the free labor of the State. No other 
party would have promised the liquor interests of Ohio to repeal the 
tax law if it attained power in both branches of the Legislature, and 
then, when it secured a majority, refuse to keep faith. No other 
party would seek to introduce British free trade in the United States 
to the detriment of our industries and the labor of the country. No 
other party could live and stand as it does in opposition to the best 
interests of the people and the orderly observance of law. 

Its record would have utterly wrecked any other party. Its vaga- 
ries, its inconsistencies, its infidelity to public trust, its violation of 
oft-repeated pledges to the people, its disloyalty in war and its disre- 
gard of public faith and public credit in peace, would have disinte- 
grated any other party in any country of the world. It attained 
power in 1884 under false pretenses. It charged upon the Eepub- 

•i licans maladministration, peculation, and embezzlement. It wanted 
I to get into power to look at the books, when it would disclose whole- 
' sale robbery of the public moneys. It has had its hands upon the 
books for six months, it has had expert accountants searching for 
false entries, but it has signally failed to find anything but the most 
magnificent management of the official business of the country. 
After it had inspected the books it counted the money. Here would 
be found the Republican shortage. The result surprised them : It 
was at first reported that the Republican party, which had been in 
power twenty-four years, receiving and disbursing millions upon 
millions of money, was short two cents. What a record — but even 

1 this shortage was soon found ! 

f The Democratic examiners had overlooked the two cents. Their 

carelessness, and not ours, accounted for the supposed loss. They 
had lost in their examination, more than the Republicans had lost 
in twenty-four years, and, after the most careful scrutiny, with a 
purpose to besmirch Republican officials, they were forced to report 



EQUAL SUFFRAGE. I79 

that the books had been properly kept and that the money was all 
there. What a vindication of Eepublican fidelity to official trust, 
what a stern rebuke to the Democratic orators, who had shouted 
themselves hoarse over Republican delinquencies ! Never did a re- 
tiring administration leave to its successor better credit, a cleaner, 
larger balance, or a more hopeful outlook for a prosperous future — in 
marked contrast with the condition in which the Democrats left the 
National treasury on March 4, 18G1. Then its vaults were empty and 
no count was necessary. They left neither money nor credit, and the 
future involved in certain war. The Eepublican party, thus finding 
the country, parts with its control after long years of rule, at peace 
with all mankind, rich and prosperous, with the best credit of any 
country on earth, with an overflowing Treasury, honored and re- 
spected among all nations. If the Democratic party can leave it in 
1889 in the matchless condition in which they found it in 1885, they 
will indeed deserve the congratulations of their countrymen. 

The National Republican party stands to-day, as it has always 
stood, battling for the right and for the accomplishment of the great- 
est good for the greatest number. It is alive to the issues and the 
demands of the hour. The defeat of last year by a scratch in the 
North, and intimidation in. the South, has neither disheartened nor 
discouraged it, but leaves it full of hope and courage, and determined 
upon future triumphs. It has every incentive to a vigorous warfare 
and every encouragement for a glorious victory. " Offensive parti- 
sanship " may not be in favor with the present administration, but 
it is abroad in the Republican ranks, and is in no wise subdued ; 
for Republicans this year, as of old, will wage an offensive warfare 
against its ancient enemy, the Democratic party. We believe in 
offensive Republicanism — the Republicanism that fearlessly strikes for 
principle — that keeps its face always to the front, moving on, and * 
sweeping aside every obstacle that impedes the onward march of / 
progressive ideas. The Cleveland administration likes inoffensive Re- 
publicans. We do not ; we have no use for them ; they are only use- 
ful to the enemy ; they only retard the movement of our advancing 
columns ; they are the stragglers moving with the baggage train — 
enrolled among us, but never ready for duty and always ready to sur- 
render without resistance. 

We like aggressive Republicans — the class who founded the party ; 
the Republicans of 1856, who, although in a hopeless minority, planted 
their stakes, took their bearings, and moved with steady step against 
the Democratic party, strongly intrenched in power. The Republic- 



180 SPEECHES AND ADDRESSES OP WILLIAM McKINLEY. 

ans of 1860, who, undismayed by the defeat of Fremont, their first 
Presidential candidate, retreated not a single inch, but advancing ag- 
gressively from their position of four years before, achieved their first 
National victory in the election of the immortal Lincoln. Inoffensive 
Republicans, now in such favor with Grover Cleveland, were not 
in that heroic band who snatched victory from an arrogant foe. The 
Eepublicans from 1861 to 1865 were made of the same material — 
offensive enough, when the Democrats of the South sought to destroy 
the Government, to fight and struggle, to die for the Union to save 
it, and blot forever from the Republic the crime of human slavery. 

It was this kind of Republicanism that took the enormous debt 
in 1865, at the close of the war, and reduced it from 82,757,000,- 
000 to $1,700,000,000, in 1885; that resumed specie payments and 
turned the dollar of promise into the coin of fulfillment ; that placed 
in the Constitution civil and political equality; and it is the kind 
of Republicanism that will make that enactment respected and obeyed 
in every part of the Union. This is the Republicanism of 1885, and 
it will conduct the present contest to a victorious end. 

We have an important duty before us in Ohio. We are the first 
of the great States to vote — the first to pronounce judgment upon 
Democratic aims. Let us not be diverted from the chief issues by any 
side questions irrelevant to the contest. Let us see to it that the 
party and State which gave Blaine a majority of over 30,000 last 
year, does not fail to give to Judge Foraker and his associates upon 
the ticket an equal victory on the second Tuesday of October. 



WHAT PROTECTION MEANS TO VIEGINIA. 

A Campaign Speech at the Academy of Music, Petersburg, 
Virginia, October 29, 1885. 

[As reported for the Virginia State Committee.^ 

My Fellow-Citizens : I come to your State upon the iuvita- 
tion of the Chairman of the Eepublicau State Committee [General 
Mahoue], to talk to you about the country and its condition, and the 
relation of the two political parties to our present and future. I do 
not come to tell you the splendid story of the Republican party in 
the past, for with that you are all familiar. I come rather to talk to 
you of the future, of that, which concerns your labor, your material 
interests, and your individual as well as the general prosperity. I 
come to say in Virginia precisely what I have said in Ohio, for there 
is one thing that can always be said about the Republican party — it 
is a National party. It advocates the same princijiles in Ohio and 
Massachusetts, in New York and New Jersey, that it advocates in 
Virginia, Mississippi, and North and South Carolina ; for wherever 
you find Republicans, whether it is in one of the States of the North, 
or in one of the States of the South, you find them always standing 
upon the same platform, always carrying the same flag, always in 
favor of National unity and National prosperity. 

Senator Sherman, our distinguished Senator, who has for more 
than thirty years been in public life, and whom the people of Ohio 
this very month, in their election, declared they wanted still longer 
in the Senate of the United States [applause] to fill the seat he has 
so long and honorably filled, has met the accusation that has been 
made against Northern speakers, and men who are engaged for the 
Republican party and in the Republican cause in the North, touching 
the " waving of the bloody shirt." That seems to trouble the Demo- 
crats of the State of Virginia a great deal. [Cries of " Talk about 
it ! "] Now, I do not know for the life of me, my fellow-citizens, 



182 SPEECHES AND ADDRESSES OF WILLIAM McKINLEY. 

what the Democrats mean by " waving the bloody shirt." [A voice, 
" Nor anybody else."] I do not know whether you know what they 
mean or not, but if they mean by " waving the bloody shirt " that 
the Republican party of Ohio has insisted that every man in this 
country is the equal of every other man politically, then I want to 
confess before a Virginia audience that we have " waved the bloody 
shirt." [Applause.] If that is what it means, we have not only 
waved the bloody shirt, but the Republican party of this country, and 
the good men of this country of every political party, will continue to 
wave it until every citizen of this Republic shall enjoy every right 
guaranteed to him by the Constitution of the United States. [Great 
applause, and cries of " Talk about it ! "] I have said that in Ohio. 
I say it in Virginia, in sight of the battlefields upon which we fought. 
We say it iu the North, and we say it in the South, that not only 
shall the black man, but the white man, the native-born and the 
naturalized, enjoy equally every right guaranteed by the Constitution 
of the United States wherever the American flag floats [applause] ; 
and when we say that, my fellow-citizens, we say nothing about the 
late war except its eternal settlements. 

I came down here to Virginia to speak for two ex-Confederate 
soldiers. I fought for the Union in our mighty Civil War. [Ap- 
plause.] I was all over the Valley of Virginia during the " recent 
civil strugo-le." I know the stuff of which the Confederate soldier 
was made, and I know that no braver men ever drew sword than 
these Confederate soldiers of the State of Virginia [applause] ; and I 
believe that the Confederate soldiers of the State of Virginia are too 
honorable and too high-minded to demand anything except complete 
acquiescence in every part of the Union of the great settlement made 
between Grant and Lee at Appomattox [applause], and afterward 
embodied into the Constitution of the United States. I come to 
speak for Captain Wise [applause], an old Confederate soldier, and for 
General Mahone, another Confederate soldier. [Applause.] I come 
to speak for them because they stand as representatives in the State 
of Virginia of the National Republican party, which stands for the 
Union here and everywhere. [Great applause, and cries of " Good ! "] 

And while blood is an excellent thing (I like good blood), yet, my 
fellow-citizens, do not forget that brains are safer, more to be relied 
upon, than blood. [Applause.] They will serve you better, and 
every man in this country, as Senator Sherman has told you, must 
t" stand upon his own bottom," every man must "blaze his own way" 
in the United States. We might just as well commence to under- 



WHAT PROTECTION MEANS TO VIRGINIA. 183 

stand that now. [Cries of " That's it ! "] There is no royal blood 
among us ; there are no descended titles here ; there is no way in the 
world of getting on and np, or earning money, except by work. [Ap- 
plause.] There are just two ways in the United States to acquire 
money : one is to steal it, the other is to earn it, and the honorable 
way is to earn it ; and you earn it by labor, either the labor of the 
hand or the labor of the brain. [Applause.] And the industrious 
labor of the hand, and the careful labor of the brain — the possessors 
of these are going to be the men of the future, whether they are in 
Virginia or in Ohio. [Applause.] There is no use of sitting down 
under your ancestral tree and talking about the past. That is secure. 
That has all been achieved. What we want to do, as a people having 
the same destiny, is to determine what will accomplish the greatest 
good for the greatest number within the limits of our great country 
[applause] ; and whatever does that, and whatever party advocates 
that, is the party to which all should yield willing allegiance. 

Now, a great question, my fellow-citizens, before this country — a 
question of the now and a question of the hereafter — is whether we 
shall have maintained in the United States a system of protection to 
American labor and American development, or whether we shall 
have practical free trade with all the countries of the world, and im- 
pose no duties except for revenue upon articles of merchandise, and 
products that may be brought into the United States. [Several 
voices, " No free trade."] No, we want no free trade. Now, first of 
all, we want to know which party, if any, is in favor of free trade? [A 
voice, " The Democratic party."] And which party is in favor of a 
protective tariff ? [A voice, " The Kepublican party."] You say that 
the Democratic party is in favor of free trade, and the Republican 
party in favor of protection. But there are a good many Democrats 
who say they are in favor of protection — a good many of them, I say. 
There are two ways of determining the position of a political party : 
one is by its platforms, the other is by its record and its votes in the 
Congress of the United States. So, if you want to determine what 
the Democratic party believes, or what the Republican party believes, 
you must first go to their platforms, and then you must go to their 
record in Congress to see if they concur, each with the other. [Cries 
of " That's it ! "] 

Now let us try the Democratic and Republican parties by this 
test for a moment, because I would not do the Democratic party any 
injustice upon this subject if I could ; and I assert here to-night, and 
I challenge contradiction by any gentleman in this audience, or else- 



184 SPEECHES AND ADDRESSES OF WILLIAM McKINLEY. 

where, that since 1840, and before, with just two exceptions, the 
Democratic party of the United States in National conventions and in 
National platforms, from 1840 to 1884, has declared in favor of a 
revenue tariff closely approximating free trade. They did it in 1840, 
they did it in 1844, they did it in 1848, they did it in 1852, they 
did it in 1856, they did it in 1860, and again in 1868, with a sugges- 
tion of " incidental protection," and they omitted it in 1864 and 1872. 
And why did they omit it ? They omitted it in 1872, because in that 
year the Democratic party nominated for its Presidential candidate the 
old Republican leader, Horace Greeley, who had taught the younger 
men of this country the great doctrine of American protection, and they 
did not, therefore, that year dare to declare in favor of free trade with 
a protectionist standing on their platform. So they said, and they 
committed Mr. Greeley to that proposition, that this question of the 
tariff should be under the control of Congress, and there should be 
no Executive interference. So if Congress passed a free-trade law 
they committed Mr. Greeley to the proposition that he should not 
veto such a bill. But in 1876 they declared again in favor of free 
trade with the other countries of the world ; so again in 1880, and 
again in 1884. Now, that is their platform record. Go to the Con- 
gress of the United States, and you will find that in 1846 they re- 
pealed the protective law of 1842, one of the best protective laws we 
ever had. Under it our country built up and prospered, industries 
were inaugurated, laboring men were contented and happy. They 
repealed it in 1846, and it remained repealed, substituting therefor 
the Walker tariff of that year, which remained upon our statute- 
books (with subsequent amendments more and more approximating 
free trade) until 1860. In 1861 the Republican party made a pro- 
tective tariff law, but ever since 1868 the Democrats in Congress 
have sought to break down that great system. Colonel Morrison tried 
it in the Forty-fourth Congress ; Fernando Wood, of New York, tried 
it in the Forty-fifth Congress ; Randolph Tucker, of your own State, 
who became the Chairman of the Committee on Ways and Means of 
the House in the Forty-sixth Congress, upon the death of Mr. Wood, 
also tried it ; and they have tried it in every Congress since. The 
last attempt was in the Forty-eighth Congress, when Colonel Mor- 
rison's " horizontal " tariff bill was beaten by the Republican party. 
So that their platform record and their record in Congress both 
concur in making that party a free-trade or revenue-tariff party. 

Now look at the Republican party. The first National platform 
of the Republican party was made in 1856, and they put in that 



WHAT PROTECTION MEANS TO VIRGINIA. 185 

platform a declaration in favor of a protective tariff ; and in every 
platform it has made since, from 18G0 to 1884 inclusive, without a 
single exception, the National utterance has been in favor of the 
maintenance of a protective tariff which shall give encouragement to 
American development and furnish employment to American labor. 

Then go to the records of Congress, and you will find, as I have 
already said, that the Eepublicans passed the protective law of 18G1, 
that they have maintained the protective system ever since, and they 
have maintained it always in spite of the bitterest opposition of the 
Democratic party. They have had but little help from the Demo- 
cratic party of the United States. Occasionally a Democrat in Penn- 
sylvania, and now and then a Democrat in New Jersey, would vote 
with the Kepublicans against the reduction of duties. 

But I do not know of a single Eeprescntative from the State of 
Virginia — I mean a Democratic Eeprescntative — save one, since 18G8, 
who has not voted in favor of every free-trade proposition made by 
the free traders of the country — every one of them — from Eandolph 
Tucker down. There is just one exception, and that, I believe, is 
George D. Wise, who voted last year with the Eepublican party to 
defeat the Morrison Bill, which would have closed up thousands of 
the great industries of the United States. Well, now, if George D. 
Wise believes in protection, he doesn't belong to the Democratic 
party. He had to come over to us, to join us, to carry out his views ; 
that's all there is of it. When he wanted to prevent free trade, he 
had to come over to the Eepublican party and vote with it, for his 
old party stood almost solidly against him and in favor of free trade. 

Now, my fellow-citizens, what is this tariff ? It is very largely mis- 
understood, or rather it is very little understood ; and if I can to-night 
make this audience, the humblest and the youngest in it, understand 
what the tariff means, I will feel that I have been well paid for my 
trip to Virginia. 

What then is the tariff ? The tariff, my fellow-citizens, is a tax put 
upon goods made outside of the United States and brought into the 
United States for sale and consumption. That is, we say to England, 
we say to Germany, we say to France, " If you want to sell your goods 
to the people of the United States, you must pay so much for the 
privilege of doing it ; you must pay so much per ton, so much per 
yard, so much per foot, as the case may be, for the privilege of selling 
to the American people ; and what you pay in that form goes into 
the public treasury to help discharge the public burdens." It is just 
like the little city of Petersburg, for example. I do not know what 



186 SPEECHES AND ADDRESSES OF WILLIAM McKINLEY. 

your custom may be, but in many cities of the North if a man comes 
to our cities and wants to sell goods to our people on the street, not 
to occupy any of our business houses, not being a permanent resi- 
dent or trader, not living there, but traveling and selling from town 
to town, if he comes to one of our little cities in Ohio, we say to him, 
"Sir, you must pay so much into the city treasury for the privilege 
of selling goods to our peoj)le here." Now, why do we do that ? AVe 
do it to protect our own merchants. 

Just so our Government says to the countries of the Old World ; 
it says to England and the rest : " If you want to come in and sell 
to our people, and make money from our people, you must pay some- 
thing for the privilege of doing it [a voice, ' That's true '], and pay 
it at the Treasury and at the customhouses," and that goes into the 
Treasury of the United States to help discharge the public debt and 
pay the current expenses of the Government. Now, that is the tariff ; 
and if any man at this point wants to ask me any questions about it, 
I want him to do it now, for I don't want when I am gone, to have 
some Democrat say, " If I could only have had an opportunity to 
ask him a question, I would like to have done it, because I could 
have exposed the fallacy of his argument." So I want him to do 
it now. [Applause. No one responded to the invitation.] 

What is the difference between the Democratic party and the Re- 
publican party about this tariff? The Democratic party believes in 
a tariff — that is, a revenue tariff. The Republican party believes in a 
protective tariff, that not only raises the requisite revenue but does 
something else for our own people. Now, let me explain that. 
What is a revenue tariff ? A revenue tariff is a tax, such as I have 
been describing, that will raise the most revenue — the largest num- 
ber of dollars — upon the fewest number of articles. The Demo- 
cratic idea is to put the tariff on the goods that we can not make in 
the United States, and the products that we can not raise in the 
United States. Do you understand me ? If there is anything we 
can not manufacture in the United States, and we must have, the 
Democratic party says put the tax on that, because from necessity 
we can not grow it at home, we can not manufacture it at home, and 
our very necessities impel us to import, and that swells the importa- 
tion and at the same time swells the revenues. 

Now, the Republican idea is just the opposite. The Republican 
plan is to put no tax upon any goods that we can not manufacture in 
the United States — put no tax upon any product that is brought from 
other countries that we can not raise in the United States ; but put 



WHAT PROTECTION MEANS TO VIRGINIA. 187 

taxes upon products which come from foreign countries like those we 
do raise in the United States, and on goods that are made abroad 
like those that we do manufacture in the United States. Now, 
what will that do ? First, it will raise a revenue, just as the other 
system will. Then, it does more than that : it not only raises the 
revenue, but the tax that is put upon the kinds of foreign goods that 
are manufactured here protects the men who manufacture them in 
the United States. [Applause, and cries of " Now you're talking ! "] 
Now, why do we put a tax on foreign wool ? For two reasons : 
it brings a revenue to the Treasury, and at the same time protects 
the men who grow and raise wool in the United States. [A voice, 
"That's so."] Now, we put a tax on sumac. That is a Virginia 
industry [a voice, » Yes, it is "], and it furnishes employment to a 
great many people. We put a tax upon foreign sumac. We say to 
those people on the other side who would ship it over here and com- 
pete with what we produce, " If you want to bring your sumac into 
the United States and sell it to our people, you must pay so much 
for the privilege of doing it " ; and that not only gives a revenue to the 
Government, but it protects the men who are engaged in producing 
it in the State of Virginia. [Applause.] 

The Democratic idea is. Don't put any tax on sumac, because we 
can produce it in the United States, and therefore let all the foreign 
sumac come in free and compete with our sumac. We say. No ; 
just put the tax right on that thing, and if importers must bring 
foreign sumac here let them pay for the privilege of doing so. [Ap- 
plause.] Then we put a duty upon peanuts. [A voice, " Now you're 
hitting it ! "] It is a very little thing. They speak of the peanut 
business as being a very small business, but I have discovered, in 
riding about your city with Senator Mahone to-day, that it is a very 
large production about Petersburg. 

The Democratic idea is to take off all the duty on peanuts ; let 
them come in free, or pay a very small duty at the customhouse ; let 
them come in and reduce the price, if you please, of American pea- 
nuts, and reduce the price of American labor that is engaged in pro- 
ducing them. We say. No ; stop at the customhouse ; if you want 
to bring them in, pay something into the Treasury. [Applause.] 
Less duty might cheapen the peanut for a time, but it would only be 
temporary; when the foreign article had broken down our production 
the price would go up and be higher than ever. 

We put a duty of $6.60 on a ton of pig metal— a great industry 
in the United States which furnishes employment to thousands and 
13 



188 SPEECHES AND ADDRESSES OF WILLIAM McKINLEY. 

tens of thousands of laboring men. We tell every man in Amer- 
ica who wants Scotland's pig iron, if he thinks it is any better, and 
does not want the American pig iron — we tell him, if he must have 
the Scotch, " You must pay for the privilege," and in that way we 
maintain that great industry. We make pig iron, and we keep up 
the price of American labor. 

What else do you grow or produce in Virginia? I care not what 
it is, tobacco, and every other one of your great products, is fully 
protected, and they are protected because the Eepublican party has 
decreed and ordered it ; for you never had a protective-tariff law 
under the administration of the Democratic party. [A voice, " No, 
nothing else."] If they had the Senate of the United States, as they 
now have the House, three months would not elapse after the con- 
vening of the Forty-ninth Congress next December — three months 
would not elapse, I say — until they would overturn and destroy the 
protective tariff of the Eepublican party, and substitute in its place 
a revenue-free-trade law in harmony with the principles of the Demo- 
cratic party ; and therefore I am interested — as every man who loves 
his country and her development is interested — in preserving the Sen- 
ate of the United States from the hands of the Democratic party, 
[Applause.] 

I said to the people of Ohio, when we were making our canvass 
this year, " Elect a Republican Legislature, so that we may send John 
Sherman [applause and cheers] back to the Senate of the United 
States, and thereby preserve a Republican majority in that great par- 
liamentary body." And I say to the citizens of Virginia, I do not care 
what your politics are, I do not care where you stood during the 
great Civil War — if you are interested in the development of a 
new and progressive order of things in Virginia, I say to you, as 
I said to the people of Ohio, " Elect a Legislature that will send 
to the Senate of the United States a man who will vote for a pro- 
tective tariff," and who has done it over and over again [applause] ; 
and if you do that, the Republican party will preserve its majority 
in that great body, which is the only Republican citadel we have 
left. The House is Democratic ; the President is Democratic, or 
they think he is. They thought he was [applause and laughter], 
but I do not know how he is going to turn out. [Laughter]. They 
have the House and the President, and if General Mahone is defeated 
in Virginia, I do not know that it is possible for the Republicans 
to preserve the Senate during the entire administration of Grover 
Cleveland [applause]. 



WHAT PROTECTION MEANS TO VIRGINIA. 1^9 

Now, my fellow-citizens, a little more about the tariff. It is a 
very dry subject, I know [voices, ''No it isn't"], but it is a subject 
which affects your purse, your dress, your living, and your homes ; 
it affects your every-day interests, and your ability to live in com- 
fort, and to keep your family from want. One step further upon 
that subject. In jihe early days, when the great Whig leader, Henry 
Clay, advocated a tariff, he put his advocacy of the protective tariff 
upon these grounds : That this was a new country, and that we had 
not developed our great resources; that we had no capital in the 
United States to compete with the accumulated capital of Europe, 
and that we had no skilled labor in the United States, and must have 
a protective tariff until we developed our resources, until we had 
accumulated capital, until we had put skill into the hands of our 
laborers ; for you know when our forefathers came over here they did 
not bring skilled labor with them. They came here to fell the forests 
and prepare this country for the coming civilization. And so the old 
Whig leader advocated a protective tariff until we should accumulate 
capital, develop our hidden treasures, and educate our laboring men 
to be skilled mechanics. 

Now, these grounds no longer exist so forcibly and clearly to-day. 
We have developed our country to a considerable 'extent, certainly in 
some of the States. You have not in Virginia to the same extent 
as in other States, and I will tell you why, after a little. But we 
have capital in the United States. There is no trouble about 
money. Any man who has a successful enterprise can get all the 
money he needs, and he can get it at a low rate of interest, and 
capital, therefore, can take care of itself. So, if we are to maintain a 
protective tariff, we must maintain it upon some additional grounds i 
than those advocated by the Whig party. The chief ground upon 
which we can justify a protective tariff to-day is that it is in the in- 
terest of American labor — American black labor as well as American 
white labor — and the protective tariff' we want is a tax sufficient to 
make up the difference between the prices paid labor in Europe and 
the prices paid labor in America. Now, that is all the duty we want. 
Whenever the workingmen of the United States — I mean skilled and 
unskilled laboring men — whenever they are ready to work for the same 
wages, the same low wages that are paid their rivals on the other side, 
their rivals in England, in Germany, in Belgium, and in France, en- 
gaged in the same occupation — whenever they are ready for that, which 
I hope and believe will never be, then we are ready for the free-trade 
doctrines of the Democratic party. [Applause.] It is a question that 



^90 SPEECHES AND ADDRESSES OP WILLIAM McKINLEY. 

addresses itself to the bone aud sinew of the United States ; it is a 
question for the workingmen to determine. 

I don't care what your color is, you are not paid as much for your 
labor in Virginia as we pay for labor in Ohio, [A voice, " You are 
right, too."] We do not want our labor in Ohio to be brought down 
to your standard, and we don't intend it shall be. JA voice, " Good 
enough ! "] We want to bring your standard up to ours [applause] ; 
and whether we live in the North or in the South, we are opposed to 
the policy of the Democratic party which would bring American 
labor down to the standard of the poor white labor of Europe [cries 
of " Talk about it ! "] ; and if I were not a Republican for any other 
reason than that, if I did not care what I believed about anything 
else, I would be a Republican, because Republican protection believes 
in America as against the world. [Great applause]. That is the 
policy and doctrine of the Republican party. The Democratic 
party, my fellow-citizens, is in alliance with the manufacturers and 
the traders of England, who want the American market. It is the 
pro-British party. 

Why, they call me a high protectionist ! I am a high protection- 
I ist ; I do not deny it, and I would not be seriously disturbed in mind 
\ if the tariff were a little higher. [A voice, " That's right."] Do you 
know of any reason in the world why Americans should not make 
everything that Americans need ? There is, indeed, no reason. We 
. have the capital ; we have the skill ; we have all the elements of Na- 
i-ture; we have everything we need, and' I would make the duty so 
high that there would be fewer English goods coming into the United 
IStates and more American goods consumed at home. [Applause.] 
Do you think there would be an idle man in America if we manufac- 
tured everything that Americans used ? [A voice, " No."] Do you 
(think if we didn't buy anything from abroad at all, but made every- 
' thing we needed, that every man would not be employed in the 
United States, and employed at a profitable remuneration ? Why, 
everybody is benefited by protection, even the people who do not be- 
lieve in it — for they get great benefit out of it, but will not confess it ; 
and that is what is the matter with Virginia. Heretofore she has 
not believed in it. You have not had a public man that I know of 
in Washington for twenty-five years, save one, except the Repub- 
licans, who did not vote against the great doctrine of American pro- 
tection, American industries, and American labor; and do you 
' imagine that anybody is coming to Virginia with his money to build 
a mill, or a factory, or a furnace, and develop your coal and your ore, 



WHAT PROTECTION MEANS TO VIRGINIA. 191 

bring his money down here, when you vote every time against his in- 
terests — and don't let those Avho favor them vote at all ? No. [Ap- 
plause.] If you think so, you might just as well be undeceived now, 
for they will not come. 

Why, old John Eandolph, I don't know how many years ago, 
said on the floor of the American Congress, in opposing a protect- 
ive tariff, " he did not believe in manufactories." " Why," said he, 
"if you have manufactories in Philadelphia, you will have cholera 
six months in the year." That was what the " Sage of Roanoke " 
said ; and Virginia seems to be still following the sentiments he ut- 
tered years and years ago. 

I tell you, manufactories do not bring cholera — they bring coin, 
coin ; coin for the poor man, coin for the rich ; coin for everybody 
who will work, comfort and contentment for all deserving people. 
[Voices, " It does that."] And if you vote for increasing manufac- 
tories, my fellow-citizens, you will vote for the best interests of your 
own State, and you will be making iron, and steel, and pottery, and 
all the great leading products, just as Ohio and Pennsylvania are 
making them to-day. 

Tell me why your land, in Virginia in 1880 was worth an average 
price of but $10.92 all over the State, while over in Pennsylvania the 
average price per acre was $49. .Virginia has just as good soil as 
Pennsylvania. [A voice, " Yes, she has."] Virginia has just as rich 
minerals as Pennsylvania ; and what makes the difference between 
the $11 and $49 is, that you have little development in Virginia — and 
your old policy will never bring more. 

Stand by new Virginia, and stand by your new leader, Senator 
Mahone. [Applause and cheers.] That is good sense and good policy. 
Talk about the war ! Who talks about the war ? Who talks about it, 
except the men who want to keep its bitterness and passions alive 
for their own political ends ? I do not know how it is down here in 
Virginia, but the men who are eternally talking about the war over 
in my State (Ohio) are the men who were not in it. [Applause, and 
cries of " That's so ! "] They are the fellows. General Mahone, who 
are *' invincible in peace, but invisible in war." [Applause.] They 
are the most magnificent warriors on the street corners that Ohio 
ever saw, but they never drew swords for their country. It is the 
same crowd, precisely the same crowd, who told the Southern people 
to " Go in, and there are hundreds of thousands of Democrats who 
will stand by you." Did any of them ever do it ? [Several voices, 
" No."] That same crowd old Virginia is following to-day. They 



192 SPEECHES AND ADDRESSES OF WILLIAM McKINLEY. 

never brought you any good in the past, they will never bring you 
any good in the future. 

Why, Kentucky is very much such a State as Virginia in that par- 
ticular. The average price per acre for land in that State is $13.80, 
while it is 844 per acre all over the State of Ohio. There is nothing 
but the river that divides us. The Ohio vv^ashes the banks of both 
States. The same sun shines upon both. The same gentle rain comes 
to moisten both. The same industrious laborers toil in both, yet 
Ohio can sell her lands, from her poorest to her best — her rough 
hill lauds and all — at an average of $44 per acre, while Kentucky 
lands will bring but $14. What is the reason for it? Kentucky 
believes in the Eesolutions of 1798, and in the free-trade reaction- 
ary policy of the Democratic party, and hence she has no manu- 
factories. 

My fellow- citizens, I would like to talk to you further, but a dis- 
tinguished gentleman from Illinois [General Green B. Eaum] is pres- 
ent, wlio I want you to hear. I want you to hear from two of " the 
invading States." 

We came down not in large numbers ; there are only three of us 
here, hardly a corporal's guard ; it can not fairly be called " an in- 
vasion." [Laughter.] There are no cavalry, we have no martial 
music, no brass bands, and I know Senator Sherman did not bring 
along with him the saddle of his illustrious brother. [Applause and 
laughter.] I do not know what you think about it, my fellow- 
citizens, but I will venture to advise you that brains will make an 
infinitely better Governor than any saddle, whether it was mounted 
by General Grant or General Lee. Stick to brains, and let the sad- 
dle go ! [Applause.] 

What in the world has Grover Cleveland done ? Will you tell 
me? [A voice, " Nothing."] You give it up? I have been look- 
ing for six weeks for a Democrat who could tell me what Cleveland 
has done for the good of his country and for the benefit of the 
people, but I have not found him, and I thought I might find him 
in Virginia, for I have a chromo for that fellow. [Laughter.] What 
has he done ? He has been in power eight months. He says himself, 
in his order issued yesterday, that two thirds of his time has been 
uselessly spent with Democrats who want oflSce, and he is going to 
stop that ; and I give notice — because you may not have read it in the 
papers — I give notice to the Democrats of Virginia, that under Cleve- 
land's recent order, promulgated yesterday, you can not see him 
about an office during the whole month of November. Now, he has 



WHAT PROTECTION MEANS TO VIRGINIA. 193 

been so occupied in that way that he has not done anything else. 
Yes, he has ; I want to give Mr. Cleveland credit for everything he 
has done. He has closed up the great American shipbuilding estab- 
lishment of John Roach, and shut out 2,500 men from the opjjor- 
tunity of earning a living. He has done another thing — issued a 
new postal card. The old postal card that we have had for a good 
many years went through the mails very well — reached its destination 
usually. Our old postal card had a vignette of the Goddess of Lib- 
erty upon it. Grover Cleveland has changed that postal card, and 
he has blotted out the Goddess of Liberty and put in its place the 
head of Thomas Jefferson — taking the youth of America back to 
1798. What I am down here for is to advise you to let 1798 go, and 
look to 1888 ! 

Why, my friends, Grover Cleveland and his party said when he 
got into power "good times were coming." Do you remember that? 
[Several voices, " Yes."] Why, every man was going to have all he 
wanted to eat, and, in some localities where the revenue laws do not 
prevail, all he wanted to drink [laughter] — and all he wanted to 
wear. He has been in eight months, and I submit to you whether 
the times are as good to-day as they were the day Chester A. Arthur 
vacated the Presidential chair? [Cries of " No ! no ! "] I will ask any 
man here. Democrat or Republican, whether times are better to-day? 
[A voice, " They are harder."] 

I tell you, times will never get better through the Democratic 
party. Times, I think, will get better after a while [a voice, " I be- 
lieve you "], but if they do, they will get better in spite of the Demo- 
cratic party, and because the Democratic party can not help it. I 
tell you, free-trade Democracy does not mean prosperity, because 
when free trade comes, and everything made on the other side comes 
in here to compete with what we make on this side, either one of 
two things must happen — either the American manufacturer must 
quit business, put out his fires, discharge his employes, or go to his 
pay roll and cut that pay roll down low enough to compete with the 
cheap labor that makes the product on the other side. [Cries of 
"That's it!"] You will never have prosperity so long as the Demo- 
cratic party remains as a standing menace to the industry, growth, 
and advancement of the United States. But, I have talked too long. 
[Cries of " Go on ! go on ! " " Talk a little more ! "] 

I thank you, my fellow-citizens. If you will this year elect John 
S. Wise Governor [great apjolause and cheering], and make it j^ossible 
for General Mahone to go back to the Senate, I will come down just 



194 SPEECHES AND ADDRESSES OF WILLIAM McKINLEY. 

as often and " go on " just as long as you want me to. [Tremendous 
applause, and cries of " Now you're talking!"] 

Stand by your interests — stand by the party that stands by the 
people. [A voice, " You are right, we will do it."] Because in the 
Republican party there is no such thing as class or caste. The 
humble, poor colored man in the Republican party, the humble, 
poor white man in the Republican party, has an equal chance with 
the opulent white or colored Republican in the race of life. And so 
with every race, and every nationality, the Republican party says, 
" Come up higher ! " We do not appeal to passions ; we do not ap- 
peal to baser instincts ; we do not appeal to race or war prejudices. |i 
AVe do appeal to your consciences ; we do appeal to your own best 
interests, to stand by a party that stands by the people. Vote the 
Republican ticket, stand by the protective policy, stand by American 
industries, stand by that policy which believes in American work for 
American workmen, that believes in American wages for American 
laborers, that believes in American homes for American citizens. 
Vote to maintain that system by which you can earn enough not only 
to give you the comforts of life but the refinements of life ; enough 
to educate and equip your children, who may not have been fortu- 
nate by birth, who may not have been born with a silver spoon in 
their mouths ; enough to enable them in turn to educate and prepare 
their children for the great possibilities of American life. I am 
for America, because America is for the common people. [Ap- 
plause.] We have no kings ; we have no dukes ; we have no 
lords. Every man in this country represents the sovereign power 
of this great Government, and every man has equal power with every 
other man to clothe that sovereign with his will. I believe in 
America, because we have no laws in this country like the old laws of 
primogeniture, where everything goes to the first-born; and I like 
this country for another thing. When the rich man dies he can not 
entail his property. [A voice, " That's true."] Often the boy he 
leaves behind him, reared in luxury and wealth, if raised to do 
nothing, can not take care of the property left him. [Cries of 
" That's so ! "] I will tell you how it is up in our country, and I 
want it so down here in Virginia. In less than twenty-five years 
the son of a poor man has a part of the wealth which the opulent 
ancestor left that will not stay with his unworthy descendant. And 
so everybody gets a chance after a while. The wealthy men of our 
country to-day were poor men forty years ago, and the future manu- 
facturers are the mechanics of the present. Make that possible in 



WHAT PROTECTION MEANS TO VIRGINIA. 195 

Virginia, and you will win. Make it possible to break down the 
prejudices of the past. Get out from under your ancestral tree. 
Eecognize and give force to the Constitution, permit every man to 
vote for the party of his choice, and have his ballot honestly counted. 
Push to the front where you belong as a State and a people. 

Be assured that the Eepublicans of the North harbor no resent- 
ments—only ask for the results of the war. They wish you the 
highest prosperity and greatest development. They bid you, in the 
language of Whittier : 

" A school-house plant on every hill, 
Stretching in radiate nerve-lines thence, 
The quick wires of intelligence ; 
Till North and South together brought 
Shall own the same electric thought ; 
In peace a common flag salute, 
And, side by side in labor's free 
And unresentful rivalry, 
Harvest the fields wherein they fought." 

[Long and continued applause.] 



LABOK ARBITRATIOK 

Speech in the House of Eepresentatives, Forty-ninth 
Congress, April 2, 1886. 

[From the Congressional Record.'] 

The House being in Committee of the "Whole, and having under consideration 
the bill (H. R. 7,479) to provide for the speedy settlement of controversies and dif- 
ferences between common carriers engaged in Interstate and Territorial transpor- 
tation of property or passengers and their employes, Mr. McKinley said— 

Mr. Chairman : I rise to oppose the amendment of the gentle- 
man from Kentucky [Mr. Breckinridge]. The whole purpose of the 
amendment is to destroy whatever good results may be expected 
from the passage of this bill ; and I can readily see why a gentleman 
who is opposed to this system of settling differences between employer 
and employe should offer the amendment which is here proposed. 

I am opposed to the amendment, because I believe in the principle 
and tendency of the bill. It confers no rights or privileges touching 
arbitration which are not now enjoyed by common carriers and those 
engaged in their service. It leaves them where it finds them, with 
the right of voluntary arbitration, to settle their differences through 
a peaceful and orderly tribunal of their own selection. It only follows 
the principle recognized in many States of the Union, notably in 
Ohio and Massachusetts, and gives National sanction and encourage- 
ment to a mode of settlement of grievances between employer and 
employ6 which is approved by the best judgment of the country and 
the enlightened sentiment of all civilized peoples. While the bill 
does not compel arbitration, its passage here will not be without in- 
fluence as a legislative suggestion in commending the principle to 
both capital and labor as the best and most economic way of compos- 
ing differences and settling disagreements, which experience has uni- 
formly shown, in the absence of an amicable adjustment, results in 
loss to all classes of the community, and to none more than the 



LABOR ARBITRATION. 197 

workingmen themselves. If by the passage of this simple measure 
arbitration as a system shall be aided to the slightest extent or ad- 
vanced in private or public favor, or if it shall serve to attract the 
thoughtful attention of the people to the subject, much will have 
been accomplished for the good order of our communities and for 
the welfare and prosperity of the people. I am in favor of this 
bill for what it is, and only for what it is. It does not undertake 
to do impossible things or cross the line of safety, I will regret 
if it shall deceive anybody; and if it is the purpose of anybody 
to make believe that its passage is a cure for the evils and dis- 
content which pervade society, I must disclaim now any part or 
share in such purpose or expectation, for it will not and can not, and 
nobody supposes it will. It simply provides that when the railroad com- 
panies operating through two or more States or in the Territories, and 
their employes, shall agree upon and consent to an arbitration, this 
bill will aid, encourage, and assist the parties concerned to get at the 
truth, to probe to the bottom, ascertain the facts of the situation, by 
which the board will be enabled to act intelligently and justly to all 
interests involved. This is the whole of it in scope and extent, and 
it can not and will not deceive any one. 

It is said there is no way to enforce the judgment of the arbitra- 
tors, and therefore it is a nullity. I have the least concern on that 
score. I have no fear that, after the railroad corporation and its em- 
ployes have united in an arbitration, its judgment will be disobeyed, 
or not acquiesced in as final and conclusive. Neither will venture in 
the absence of fraud to ignore the award of a tribunal of their own 
selection, in which both have voluntarily confided for the settlement 
of their differences. We need borrow no trouble on that account. 
Refusal to obey the judgment of the arbitration would be the excep- 
tion, and not the rule, and an award honestly reached will be sacredly 
observed. Nor am I troubled because there is no compulsion to arbi- 
trate in the first instance. Either party provided for in the bill, be- 
lieving it has a genuine grievance, and inviting the other to arbitrate, 
will occupy a vantage ground which the other can not long successfully 
defy. There is a sense of fair play among the people which, when 
crystallized into public judgment, is as potent— aye, more potent— 
than statute or judicial decree. No railroad corporation, no labor 
union, no body of laboring men could long hold out against a fair 
and equitable demand, backed by a willingness to submit the justice 
of that demand to a board of competent arbitrators. In any view 
there is no harm in trying this experiment ; and in this effort, small 



198 SPEECHES AND ADDRESSES OF WILLIAM McKINLEY. 

and inconsequential as it may seem to be, I am confident we are 
moving in the riglit direction, and that nothing but good can result. 

There is another feature of this bill which I regard of great prac- 
tical -value — that feature which provides for subpoenaing and com- 
pelling the attendance of witnesses and the payment of the necessary 
expenses of the arbitration. It places both parties upon an equality 
in pursuing the investigation. A lack of means upon the one hand 
or the other will not impair the fullest consideration. The humblest 
and poorest can send for persons and papers without incurring an 
expense which very often they can illy bear. As the compensation of 
the board comes out of the public treasury, neither party is subject 
to the expense of the investigation, and the laboring men will not be 
required to draw from their scanty savings or assess their fellow- 
workmen to meet actual expenses. This overcomes the disadvan- 
tage of limited means on the one hand, and avoids any advantage 
which might occur from bounteous means on the other. It equalizes 
their condition for a thorough investigation and a complete disclosure 
of the true situation. That provision alone is worth to the cause of 
arbitration much more than it will cost the National Treasury. 

Then, in case of disagreement after arbitration the testimony in 
full can be published for the information of all. The great public is 
put in possession of the grievances, and can judge who is right and 
who is wrong ; and the public judgment, whatever it may be upon 
the one side or the other, will be more forceful, more commanding, 
more certain of considerate attention than any penalty we could im- 
pose by legislative enactment. I have listened patiently to this debate 
from its beginning, and have heard no good reason given why the 
House should not pass this bill. I am not troubled about its consti- 
tutionality. I do not believe it is open to constitutional objection. I 
believe that a Constitution which gives Congress control of the rail- 
roads operating through two or more States to regulate the rate of 
freights is broad enough to justify us in taking cognizance between 
these same railroads and the employes upon their lines, and furnish 
the machinery for a peaceful arbitration, voluntarily agreed upon 
among themselves, of any differences or disagreements which may 
arise between them. If the one is constitutional the other surely is. 
Both are important problems demanding solution, and both, I trust, 
will be dealt with by this Congress, with fairness and justice to all. 

I believe, Mr. Chairman, in arbitration as a principle ; I believe it 
should prevail in the settlement of international differences. It rep- 
resents a higher civilization than the arbitrament of war. I believe 



LABOR ARBITRATION. I99 

it is in close accord with the best thought and sentiment of mankind ; 
I believe it is the true way of settling differences between labor and 
capital ; I believe it will bring both to a better understanding, uniting 
them closer in interest, and promoting better relations, avoiding force, 
avoiding unjust exactions and oppression, avoiding the loss of earn- 
ings to labor, avoiding disturbances to trade and transportation ; and 
if this House can contribute in the smallest measure, by legislative 
expression or otherwise, to these ends, it will deserve and receive the 
gratitude of all men who love peace, good order, justice, and fair play. 



THE PAYMENT OF PENSIONS. 

Speech in the House of Representatives, Fokty-ninth 
Congress, June 22, 1886. 

[From the Congressional JRecord.'] 

The House having under consideration the report of the Committee on Rules, 
proposing an amendment to Rule 23, relative to the payment of pensions, Mr. 
McKiNLEY said — 

Mr. Speaker : If this proposition coming from the Committee 
on Rules, representing the majority of this House, means anything, 
it means that we have not revenues enough now on hand to pay the 
pensions of deserving soldiers. If it means anything, it is a confes- 
sion before the House and the country that our revenues are inade- 
quate to meet the just demands of the disabled soldiers of the Republic. 
Now, if it means that, Mr. Speaker, then the action of this House, 
and the conduct of certain members of the House, are quite unexplain- 
able. We have witnessed here within the last six days an effort on the 
part of a majority of the leading Committee of this House to reduce 
the receipts of this Government from customs about 126,000,000 — a 
proposition coming from the Committee on Ways and Means to so 
adjust the tariff as to diminish the annual income of the Government 
$26,000,000 ; and now, immediately after the failure of that Commit- 
tee to have accorded to it even the courtesy of a "consideration by the 
House of that measure for the reduction of the revenues, immediately 
following that, we have this proposition from a member of the Com- 
mittee on Rules, himself the Chairman of the Committee on Ways 
and Means of the House which reported that tariff measure — we have 
a proposition from that distinguished gentleman which amounts to a 
confession that we have not and will not have within the next twelve 
months revenue enough in the Treasury to meet the honest and just 
demands of the soldiers of the Union. 

What strange inconsistency ! What is the matter ? What can 



THE PAYMENT OF PENSIONS. 201 

account for these contradictory positions within a week ? Now, Mr. 
Speaker, if we have not revenue enough to meet these demands to- 
day, then why did you want to reduce revenues $26,000,000 last 
Thursday ? What has been done with that surplus since then ? 
And not only does that proposition come from the majority of the 
Committee on Ways and Means, but, if the newspaper reports are 
correct, the gentleman from Pennsylvania [Mr. Randall], who on 
this occasion at least seems to be in harmony with the majority on 
the other side of the House, has himself a bill that he is about to in- 
troduce in the House, reducing internal taxation some $20,000,000, 
and customs duties about $6,000,000. Yet these two leading gentle- 
men of the same political faith, each proposing to reduce the annual 
income of the Government, come here and say to the House : " We 
have not money enough to pay our pensioners ; and if you intend to 
vote pensions you must provide a way to get the money. There is 
enough, and a surplus, for all other purposes." 

I say that is not fair ; that is not frank ; that is not manly. 
If we have no money in the Treasury to pay the pensions of our 
worthy and dependent soldiers, let us put some there ; let us provide 
means to increase our revenues, let us increase taxation. If it is neces- 
sary that we should resort to an income tax in order to give to the 
soldiers of this country what we pledged them they should have when 
they went forth to fight and suffer, then I am in favor of an income 
tax. But it would not seem necessary to resort to any extraordinary 
taxation, so long as the Ways and Means Committee of the House re- 
port a surplus of $30,000,000 in the Treasury which they feel called 
upon to diminish by a revision of the tariff. 

Mr. Ryan. An income tax for general purposes ? 

For general purposes ; for there is no reason in the world why a 
discrimination should be made against the just claims of the soldiers 
of the Union. The only purpose of such a movement must be to 
make the payment of pensions odious. It is virtually saying that the 
House will provide money for every other purpose in the ordinary way 
through its appropriate Committee, but for the deserving soldiers, if 
you would keep your promises to them, you must find the money. 
Why do not the gentlemen on the other side apply such a require- 
ment to the appropriation to pay their salaries and allowances? It 
would be just as sensible and equally appropriate. Why not fix that 
limitation and condition upon every bill which requires the expendi- 
ture of money ? Why not make the River and Harbor Committee 



202 SPEECHES AND ADDRESSES OF WILLIAM McKINLEY. 

bring in a tax bill as a rider to provide for the $14,000,000 which 
it proposes to expend for the fiscal year ? Why not make the Public 
Buildings Committee carry on every bill for the erection of a public 
building a tax bill to pay for the proposed expenditure, and so all 
the way through? Why single out the soldiers, the maimed and crip- 
pled defenders of the Union, and require that their claims, the most 
sacred and obligatory which rest upon us, shall be paid from a dif- 
ferent fund ; aye, more, that before they shall have the relief they 
deserve the money must be raised by special taxation, differing from 
all other claims against the Government? This is not right, and 
should be firmly resisted by every real friend of the soldier and of 
good legislation. 



THE SURPLUS IN THE TREASURY. 

Speech in the House of Representatives, Forty-ninth 
Congress, July 14, 1886. 

[From the Congressional Record.] 

The House being in Committee of the Whole, and having under consider- 
ation the joint resolution (H. Res, 126) directing payment of the surplus in the 
Treasury on the public debt, Mr. McKinley said — 

Mr. Chairman : This resolution, coming as it does from a Dem- 
ocratic majority in one branch of the Government addressed to a 
Democratic Executive in control of another branch of the Govern- 
ment, is, to say the least, very exceptional and most remarkable. It 
is a proposition coming from a majority of the Committee on Ways 
and Means, which is in political accord with the present President of 
the United States, and will undoubtedly receive the approval of the 
majority on the other side of the Chamber. It is a proposition to 
compel the President of the United States and his Secretary of the 
Treasury to do that which they have always had the power to do, that 
which they now have authority to do, under section two of the act of 
March 3, 1881. 

The administration, which is in accord with the Committee that 
reports this resolution, has been in power sixteen months. "When it 
came into power it found the following section on the statute-books 
of the country : 

That the Secretary of the Treasury may at any time apply the surplus money 
in the Treasury not otherwise appropriated, or so much thereof as he may con- 
sider proper, to the purchase or redemption of the United States bonds. 

Not only has the Secretary of the Treasury the power to call in 
and pay off the bonds the moment they are redeemable, but he has 
the power, under that section of the statute, to go into the money 
markets of the world, wherever our bonds are held, and buy them, 
even if they have not yet matured. And yet in sixteen months a Dem- 
14 



204 SPEECHES AND ADDRESSES OF WILLIAM McKINLEY. 

ocratic administration, with the expressed and confessed authority to 
do it, has called but $58,000,000 of Government bonds for redemption, 
and leaves outstanding to-day $140,000,000 or more of the five-per- 
cents extended, now known as the three-per-cents, which are redeem- 
able at the pleasure of the Government. It is not to be wondered at, 
Mr. Chairman, that with a record like this, in view of the professions 
that have heretofore been made by the Democratic party, in view of 
their declarations in platforms and upon public rostrums in favor of 
the distribution of the surplus for the payment of Government bonds, 
characterizing the Eepublican party, as they have repeatedly done, as 
dishonest for keeping the surplus in the public treasury — I say it is 
not surprising, in view of the record made by its own administration, 
that the majority of the Ways and Means Committee, under the 
leadership of the leader of one wing of the Democratic party, should 
insist that the President of the United States and the Secretary of 
the Treasury should keep the pledges which they made to the people. 
And it is all the more suggestive and trying to these Democratic 
friends of ours, Mr. Chairman, when they look back at the record 
made by the Republican party on this very subject, a record that we 
commenced making from the very close of the war, and of which all 
of us are justly proud, which the gentleman from Pennsylvania was 
frank enough to say had paid over $1,200,000,000 of public indebted- 
ness since the conclusion of hostilities and the reign of peace. I say 
it is not surprising, looking at the record the Eepublican party had 
made, and then looking at the first sixteen months of record made by 
a Democratic administration, that the two wings of the Democratic 
party on this floor — in the language of the gentleman from Pennsyl- 
vania — should " flap together" and demand that the President should 
pay out some of this surplus on the public bonds of the country, no 
matter what consequences would follow. 

Look at the record. In 1881, two years after the resumption of 
specie payments, the Republican Secretary of the Treasury called in 
$121,000,000 of Government bonds, and paid them off. In 1882 the 
Republican Secretary of the Treasury called in $173,000,000 of Gov- 
ernment bonds and paid them off. In 1883 the same Secretary called 
in $86,000,000; and in 1884 over $70,000,000 of the Government 
bonds were paid off and canceled. In your first sixteen months you 
have paid off $58,133,000. We averaged in the last four years $153,- 
000,000 every sixteen months, and you have made a record of but 
$58,000,000 in the same length of time. It is not to be marveled at 
that the Democratic majority here smart under such a contrast, and 



THE SURPLUS IN THE TREASURY. 205 

have become impatient with their own administration, and distrust- 
ful of its capacity for financial management. 

There is another remarkable feature to which I desire to call 
attention in this connection. When a Republican Secretary of the 
Treasury was calling in these enormous sums and canceling the 
bonds, we had no such surplus in the public treasury as you have 
to-day. In 1880 we had but $141,000,000 ; and in that $141,000,000 
were included $20,000,000 of fractional silver coin which is not in- 
cluded in the surjilus reported by the present Secretary of the Treas- 
ury, although he reports as on hand more than $29,000,000 of such 
coin, which he does not regard as available. In 1881, when we called 
in $173,000,000 of bonds, in November of that year, there was but 
$100,009,000 in the Treasury remaining after that vast payment. In 
November, 1882, we had $166,000,000 of a surplus, including the 
fractional coin, and during that year we called in $86,581,000. In 
November, 1883, we had a surplus of $134,000,000, and during that 
year called in $70,000,000. To-day, according to the report of the 
Treasurer of the United States, we have exclusive of fractional silver 
coin, over $75,000,000. Why does not the administration of Grover 
Cleveland pay out that balance upon the public debt? There are 
$140,000,000 due and payable. Secretary Folger said, in his annual 
report of 1883, if the estimated receipts should continue, all the three- 
per-cents could be paid off in three and a half years, and before the 
close of the fiscal year ending June 30, 1887. One hundred and forty 
millions are yet outstanding, and but six months of these three and a 
half years are yet remaining. Why they have not been paid some one 
on the other side, close to the administration, should be able to tell us. 

Some gentleman of the majority in the confidence of the admin- 
istration ought to explain to us why the Secretary does not exercise 
the discretion given him by the statute and distribute the surplus. 
There must be some valid reason for it, some controlling reason, 
which those charged with the management of our financial affairs 
know and realize better than we can. The Secretary has the power 
to do it now, full and complete, as I have shown you by public law. 
I believe that discretion ought to be left with the executive officers 
of the Government. I believe it to be a wise discretion. I believe 
it to 'be a judicious thing to give the officers charged with the 
management of the financial affairs of the Government, charged by 
the people, the power to call the bonds or withhold a call for bonds 
whenever the condition of the Treasury will permit the one or the 
other. The hands of the President and Secretary should not be tied ; 



206 SPEECHES AND ADDRESSES OP WILLIAM McKINLEY. 

tliey should have full power to act under the laws as they are, and 
then be held to the highest responsibility and strictest accountability. 
Therefore, Mr. Chairman, unless the amendment I offered at the 
beginning of this discussion, and another amendment which will be 
offered by the gentleman from Maine [Mr. Reed], and still another 
which will be presented by the gentleman from Massachusetts [Mr. 
Long], shall be adopted by this House, I shall feel constrained to 
give a negative vote on the resolution presented by the Committee on 
Ways and Means. Of course, we can not help, I can not belp, no gen- 
tleman on this side can help, the Democratic party voting to-day a 
want of coufidence in its own administration. We can not prevent 
you from passing a vote of condemnation on the President of the 
United States and his Secretary, and that is what this resolution 
means if it becomes a law, and that is what you are doing when you 
vote for it. 

Why, think of it, Mr. Chairman ! A Eepublican Secretary of the 
Treasury presided over the financial affairs of this Government from 
1861 to 1885, a period of twenty-four years, and no such proposition 
as this was ever passed. A Eepublican Secretary of the Treasury was 
in charge from 1875 until 1885, covering the years of resumption, a 
period of more than ten years ; eight years of that time the Demo- 
cratic party had control of this House. The Republican Secretary of 
the Treasury exercised discretion under the act of March 3, 1881, 
and a Democratic House, with a majority larger than you have to- 
day, never thought of taking that discretion away from the Repub- 
lican President or the Republican Secretary of the Treasury. 

Mr. Morrison. Oh, the gentleman is mistaken ! 

Did you ever pass a resolution to compel the Secretary of the 
Treasury to pay out the surplus ? 

Mr. Morrison. I introduced the proposition and sent it to the Committee 
on Ways and Means, and I never could get it out. [Laughter.] 

Exactly. 

Mr. Morrison. I offered it in the House of Representatives and had the sup- 
port of the gentleman from Pennsylvania [Mr. Randall] in an attempt to pass it, 
but was kept from passing it by a point of order coming from the Republican 
side of the House. [Applause on the Democratic side.] 

Yes ; but you never passed it. You had control of the House ; 
you had the Committee on Rules ; you could have fixed a time for 
considering it, just as you fixed a time for considering it in this Con- 
gress ; you had a larger majority then than you have now. But, what- 



THE SUHPLUS IN THE TREASURY. 207 

ever yon may have done in the Committee, whatever you may have 
attempted to do on the floor of the House, one thing is certain, you 
never did pass a resolution taking away tliat discretion from the Re- 
publican President and the Republican Secretary of the Treasury. 
[Applause on the Republican side.] 

Mr. Morrison. I was prevented by the co-operation of Democrats with that 
side of the House. 

That is, the two wings of the Democratic party were not in har- 
mony, and one wing, with the aid of the Republicans, prevented you 
from taking away that statutory discretion from the Republican 
Secretary of the Treasury. But now that you have the Executive, 
now that you have the administration of the Treasury Department, 
both wings of the Democratic party " flap together " in denouncing a 
Democratic Secretary and a Democratic President of the United 
States for not calling in the bonds and absorbing the surplus. And 
this is not to be wondered at, Mr. Chairman. Why, the campaign 
of 1884 was waged and won upon the howl raised all over this coun- 
try that the Republicans had $400,000,000 idle surplus in the Treas- 
ury, and would not pay the honest debts of the Government. 

Governor Hendricks, it is alleged, said that all over the West. I 
have no doubt that my Greenback friend from Iowa [Mr. Weaver] 
said it all over his State. I know that the distinguished gentleman 
from Pennsylvania [Mr. Randall], in his famous speech at Nashville, 
Tennessee, when he was making that triumphal tariff march through 
the South [laughter], when he was making that grand march from 
Atlanta to the sea [renewed laughter], carrying the banner of pro- 
tection, said there were $300,000,000 of surplus in the Treasury, and 
that the administration of Grover Cleveland would take it out and 
pay the public debt with it. 

Mr. Randall. I am beginning in that direction now. [Applause on the 
Democratic side.] 

Yes, you are beginning ; but you are beginning sixteen months 
after your administration has failed to do it [applause on the Repub- 
lican side], and you have not got very far yet. [Laughter.] Sup- 
posing this resolution passes the House, supposing it passes the Sen- 
ate, to give it any force it must have the approval of the President 
of the United States ; and by this resolution you are asking that the 
President shall do what for sixteen months he has refused to do. 
He will lay down the pen, which with him within the last few weeks 
has been "mightier than the sword" [laughter], and will refuse 



208 SPEECHES AND ADDRESSES OF WILLIAM McKINLEY. 

to sign your resolution, or he will take up a fresh and newly sharp- 
ened pen and use it ; he will veto your joint resolution, if half the 
disturbance would follow its execution which the officials in the 
Treasury predict, and the surplus will still remain in the Treasury, to 
be paid whenever and in such sums as in his wisdom and that of the 
Secretary will be within the line of safety. I hesitate to join even 
with the Democrats in taking away from their administration a dis- 
cretion which Eepublican administrations have always enjoyed. I 
would want that discretion continued if we still had the administra- 
tion ; and if it is to be taken away from yours without qualification or 
condition, it must be your act, not mine. If this is a mere play of 
politics, if it is a mere play for position, you are welcome to it, gentle- 
men. When your own Secretary of the Treasury solemnly tells the 
Chairman of the Committee on Ways and Means, in an official com- 
munication, that if this resolution passes it will impair the public 
credit, will shake public confidence, will destroy the good financial 
name which we have enjoyed so long, thanks to Republican fidelity, 
that it will leave no working balance for the great transactions of the 
Government, if that is any solace or comfort in your affliction, we 
cheerfully grant it to you. When he says another thing — that this res- 
olution means trenching upon the $100,000,000 which is kept as a 
redemption fund for the legal-tender notes of the country, and 
asks his Democratic friends not to do it for the sake of our public 
credit and our financial honor, we give you the benefit of all the polit- 
ical advantage there is in it. It is your quarrel, not ours. Yet you 
do it ; you heed not the warnings of your own officials, whom you 
should trust, and, in fact, this Congress seems to be given to doing just 
what the President does not want it to do. If there is anything upon 
which the majority of this House and the President are in accord, I 
would like to know it. 

Several members (on the Republican side). Vetoing pension bills ! 

In that, they may be a happy family. 

Why, Mr. Chairman, in the annual message of the President of 
the United States, and the report of the Secretary of the Treasury, 
this Congress was asked to do three things : First, to retire the green- 
backs, to get them out of circulation, to pay them off ; second, to 
suspend the coinage of silver. The fact is, the President asked that 
before he became President. [Laughter.] He could not wait until 
he was inaugurated; he so feared calamity from its continuance- 
He therefore repeats in his formal message to Congress the statement 
that, unless this Congress shall suspend silver coinage, the financial 



THE SURPLUS IN THE TREASURY. 209 

situation of tlie country will be very much disturbed. Then finally 
he asks you to revise the tariff. What have you done in the way of 
carrying out these recommendations? You have not retired the 
greenbacks ; you have not suspended silver coinage ; you have not 
revised the tariff — at least you have not revised it under the leader- 
ship of my friend Colonel Morrison. I do not know what you may 
do under the leadership of " Colonel " Eandall. [Laughter.] What 
a delightful situation ! [Laughter and apijlause.] The gentleman 
from Pennsylvania about three or four weeks ago showed his con- 
tempt for the tariff bill of the Chairman of the Committee on Ways 
and Means ; and only the other day the Chairman of the Ways and 
Means Committee showed his positive contempt for the attempt of 
the gentleman from Pennsylvania to make a tariff bill. [Laughter.] 
So it goes. There is not a single thing upon which the members 
of the Democratic party in this House agree and are in positive ac- 
cord except in getting the offices. [Applause.] 

Mr. MoREisoN. And we are only doing middling well at that. [Laughter.] 

Yes ; and in that particular you are getting along very slowly. 
[Laughter and applause.] 

But my friend from Pennsylvania [Mr. Randall] and my friend 
from Indiana [Mr. Holman], impatient with the delay in getting 
offices when they had an appropriation bill before this House a week 
or two ago, undertook to break down the civil-service law by a rider 
on that bill. It seems that the gentleman from Pennsylvania and 
his " wing " are for the spoils. I was glad to find my honest and 
honored friend from Illinois [Mr. Morrison] standing against that 
covert attempt to nullify and destroy a public statute. [Applause.] 

Mr. Morrison. Now the gentleman is getting on my side. 

After what I have stated, and much more which I might state in 
the same connection, is it to be wondered that Secretary Manning, 
weary of the burdens of his office, indites a letter to the President of 
the United States, dated May 20, 1886, in which he says : 

The reforms in our fiscal policy which you have maintained — 

That is, keeping up the credit of the Government and keeping up 
the surplus in the Treasury — 

and which have been commended to the wisdom of the legislative branch — 

None of which the legislative branch has paid any attention to — 

are reforms necessary to our safety, binding in honor, obligatory in the traditions 
of the Democracy, set down with promises in our statute-book ! 



210 SPEECHES AND ADDRESSES OF WILLIAM McKINLEY. 

That is what Mr. Manning says to President Cleveland, in giving 
notice of his intention to retire from the Treasury. Listen to what 
the President says in his response to the Secretary : 

I have hoped that the day was at hand when the party to which we belong, 
influenced largely by faith and confidence in you and in the wisdom of your 
views, would be quickened — 

Quickened ! — 

in the sense of responsibility, and led to a more harmonious action upon the im- 
portant questions with which you have had to deal. 

That is the way the President felt May 28, 1886. 

Mr. Sessions. The hope of the ungodly shall perish. 
'' How will the President feel after this resolution of condemnation, 
f this resolution of censure, this resolution of disapproval, this resolu- 
tion of want of confidence ? As the gentleman from New York told 
/ you this morning, he can not resign and go to the country ; but 
every one of you, and every one of us, will go to the country ; and the 
issue will then be made up. If President Cleveland vetoes your reso- 
lution, you can go to the country on that. You will then have an 
issue with your own President. The $400,000,000 that it is charged 
Mr. Hendricks said was in the Treasury, the 1300,000,000 which the 
gentleman from Pennsylvania said was in the Treasury, will in the 
meantime remain there, unless the Secretary exercises the discre- 
tion he now has and pays a part or the whole of it out. I only wish 
to say in conclusion, Mr. Chairman, that I hope the amendment I 
have submitted, and others which I have indicated, will be adopted. 
It seems to me absolutely demanded that they should be, if this 
resolution is to pass. Let us save that reserve, the 8100,000,000, 
from encroachment, so that the 1346,000,000 of promises of the 
National Government shall be kept sacred and at par, as they are 
to-day. Let us maintain the old Republican policy; let us keep 

^C our promises ; and in adopting my amendment we maintain the 

Republican position and Republican precedents. If we will do 
this, and will adopt an amendment giving the Secretary of the Treas- 
ury a fair working balance, which any business man or corporation 
would keep — if we will do these two things, then your resolution 
will be harmless, and it may be spared the veto of the President. 
[Loud applause.] 

[Here follows the tabular statement of the Treasurer of the United States, of 
June 30, 1886.] 

In connection with this statement I want to read a dispatch which 



THE SURPLUS IN THE TREASURY. 211 

I sent to the Acting Secretary of the Treasury this morning, and his 
reply. It will make clear the wisdom of the amendment offered by 
the gentleman from Maine [Mr. Reed]. I invite for it the serious 
consideration of members of this House, and especially those of the 
party faith of the Secretary. It comes from the Democratic Secre- 
tary of the Treasury, whose means of knowledge can not be ques- 
tioned, and whose statements should have great weight with the ma- 
jority : 

Hon. C. S. B^AiRCHiLD, Acting Secretary of the Treasury : 

If balance of seventy-five millions, as shown by Treasurer's report of June 30th 
last, should be used to pay bonds, what would the Treasury have left for working 
balance besides fractional silver coin? An immediate answer will oblige. 

To that dispatch I received but a few moments ago the following 
reply : 

Treasury Department, July 14th. 
Hon. William McKinley, House of Representatives : 

In reply to your telegram of this date, asking what the Treasury would have 
left for working balance besides the fractional silver coin if the balance of seventy- 
five millions, as shown by the Treasurer's report of June 30th last, should be used 
in paying bonds, I beg to state that nothing would be left but trust funds, which 
it would be dishonorable and dishonest to use for that purpose, 

C. S. Fairchild, Acting Secretary. 

[Laughter and applause on the Republican side.] 



THE DEPENDENT PENSION BILL VETO. 

Speech in the House of Eepresentatives, Fojity-ninth 
Congress, February 24, 1887. 

[From the Congressional Record.'] 

The House having under consideration the veto message of the President on 
the bill (H. R. 10,457) for the relief of dependent parents and honorably discharged 
soldiers and sailors who are now disabled and dependent upon their own labor for 
support, Mr. McKinley said — 

Mr. Speaker : If I believed, as the gentleman from Wisconsin 
[Mr. Bragg] believes, that the beneficiaries under this bill were 
" good-for-nothing shirks," " scoundrels," and " vagabonds," I should 
not vote for the passage of the bill over the veto of the President, nor 
should I have voted for it when it first came to the House ; but I do 
not believe, with the gentleman from Wisconsin, that the beneficiaries 
of this bill are either " shirks " or " vagabonds " or good-for-nothing 
" scoundrels." I do believe that there are thousands scattered all over 
this country who fought as bravely as the gentleman from Wisconsin 
fought, although they are not here to tell of their heroic deeds, their 
lofty courage, and glorious achievements. (Laughter and applause 
on the Republican side.) And although they never " rode down the 
line amid the huzzas of their comrades," as the gentleman tells us it 
was his wont to do — for these brave men were generally afoot, and 
without horses, and foot-sore and weary marched to the command of 
duty — they were the soldiers of the country, the rank and file, fight- 
inw for the maintenance of the Union. These are the men that the 
bill applies to. 

Now, there are two questions involved in this bill. First, Is it 
right in principle — an act of justice to these proposed beneficiaries — 
and does the financial situation of the country and the present con- 
dition of the Treasury justify it ? That is the first question ; and the 
second question is, Does this bill fairly represent the legislative pur- 



THE DEPENDENT PENSION BILL VETO. 213 

pose of Congress ; and is that legislative purpose as expressed in this 
bill susceptible of practical execution by the administrative officers of 
the Government ? That is all there is in it. 

Let us in the briefest manner consider these questions. The first 
section of the bill, which provides for dependent parents, seems not 
to be objected to by the President, so I assume that he finds no serious 
defects in its provisions. The second section alone receives his atten- 
tion. What is it? That all persons who served three months or more 
in the military or naval service in any of the wars in which the United 
States has been engaged, who are suffering from mental or physical 
disability, not the result of their own vicious habits or gross careless- 
ness, which incapacitates them from the performance of labor in such 
a degree as to render them unable to earn a living, and who are 
dependent upon their daily labor for support, and who have been hon- 
orably discharged from the service, shall, upon due proof, etc., under 
such regulations as the Secretary of the Interior shall prescribe, be 
placed on the list of invalid pensioners, and be entitled to receive for 
such total inability $12 per month. It gives to es^ery honorably dis- 
charged soldier or sailor unable to earn a living, and who is dependent 
upon his daily toil for bread and shelter, whose inability is not self- 
inflicted, the right to draw a pension of $12 per month. Between 
private charity or the poorhouse this bill says neither, but in lieu of 
both the generous bounty of the Government. Is that not right ; is 
it not a simple act of justice ; is it not humane ; is it not the instinct 
of a decent humanity and our Christian civilization? Where is the 
wrong? Wherein is the robbery of the Treasury? These soldiers 
are cared for now by private or municipal bounty. They are cared 
for by the communities and the counties in which they reside, in some 
instances by taxation, in others at the hand of charity. 

What course so fitting as the way pointed out by this bill, by the 
Nation they served, from its own Treasury ; and upon whom or what 
does the obligation rest so strongly and urgently as upon the Nation 
itself ? It is but discharging an honorable obligation upon the part 
of the Government, and expresses its gratitude to its volunteer de- 
fenders upon land and sea. It seems to me that the bill is in every 
way warranted by duty and our situation. That it takes much or 
little money does not affect its righteousness or justice ; that consid- 
eration can only apply to our condition and our ability to meet the 
contemplated expenditure. The larger the class thus dependent and 
totally disabled only appeals the stronger to our patriotic feeling and 
duty, and makes greater and more commanding the necessity for this 



214 SPEECHES AND ADDRESSES OF WILLIAM McKINLEY. 

measure, and the greater the disgrace and inhumanity to withhold it. 
This bill is justified by precedents over and over again, in acts passed 
by both Houses of Congress in 1816, in 1818, in 1825, and in 1832, 
which received the approval of James Madison, of James Monroe, 
of John Quincy Adams, and of General Jackson. And I want now 
to set off as against my colleague, Andrew Jackson Warner, who 
speaks for the new Democracy in opposition to this bill, what the first 
Andrew Jackson, the soldier statesman, representing the old Democ- 
racy, said on December 8, 1829 : 

I would also suggest a review of the pension law, for the purpose of extend- 
ing its benefits to every Revolutionary soldier who aided in establishing our 
liberties, and who is unable to maintain himself in comfort. These relics of the 
War of Independence have strong claims upon their country's gratitude and 
bounty. 

[Applause on the Eepublican side.] 

Mr. Warner, of Ohio. That is what we want now — a review of the law. 

That is what was advocated by the leader of the Democracy of the 
past. Not so with the Democracy of the present ; they have wandered 
away, arraying themselves in opposition to generous treatment to the 
saviors of the Union. 



OUR PUBLIC SCHOOLS. 

Address at the Dedication of a Public School Building 
AT Canal Fulton, Ohio, August 30, 1887. 

Mr. President, Gentlemen of the Board of Education, 
Teachers, Pupils, and Friends : An open schoolhouse, free to all, 
evidences the highest type of advanced civilization. It is the gate- 
way to progress, prosperity, and honor, and the best security for the 
liberties and independence of the people. It is the strongest rock of 
the foundation, the most enduring stone of the temple of liberty ; 
our surest stay in every storm, our present safety, our future hope — 
aye, the very citadel of our influence and power. It is better than 
garrisons and guns, than forts and fleets. An educated people, gov- 
erned by true moral principles, can never take a backward step, nor 
be dispossessed of their citizenship or liberties. 

What a marvelous conception is the j)ublic-school system of Ohio ! 

Permanently ingrafted upon the policy and legislation of the 
State, it is free to all ; to it all are invited and welcome, without 
money and without price. It is supported with boundless generosity 
by the people of the State, open to the children of the humblest citi- 
zen or exiled sojourner within our gates, as freely and ungrudgingly 
as to the native-born, or the children of the most opulent. Within its 
jurisdiction all distinctions, social, political, and religious, are ban- 
ished ; all differences hushed ; all barriers removed. It recognizes 
neither party nor church, creed, condition, nor station, but, free as the 
air we breathe, its bounties and benefits fall in equal measure upon all. 

I fear sometimes that we do not appreciate these advantages and 
blessings. The older men and women before me realize the disparity 
between the educational facilities of their childhood and those enjoyed 
by the present generation. The log schoolhouse is gone ; in its place 
stands the stately modern edifice, built and sustained by the thought- 
ful generosity of a great State. The few weeks, or at best months, of 
schooling in a whole year, with long distances to travel to secure even 
the meager advantages of the earlier times, have given place to full 



216 SPEECHES AND ADDRESSES OF WILLIAM McKINLEY. 

ten montlis' instruction at every cross-roads, within easy reach of the 
children of every hamlet. The simple studies of reading, writing, and 
arithmetic, which constituted the entire curriculum of our fathers, 
and to which they so diligently applied themselves, while still re- 
tained, have been supplemented by a course of study which rivals even 
that of the colleges. One marvels not that it includes scientific and 
historical studies, the higher mathematics, the ancient languages — all 
within grasp of the Ohio boy and girl, all of use to the mental equip- 
ment of every-day life, all essential to the higher and greater duties 
which every American citizen may be called to perform. 

These advantages should be sacredly cherished, never lightly re- 
garded. The time to enjoy them is in youth ; no other time is so 
opportune. If neglected then, they are reasonably certain to remain 
forever unimproved. Few men or women ever acquire an education 
after they are twenty-five years of age. There are, of course, excep- 
tions, but the exceptions are so rare that they but enforce the rule, 
and are only noted in men and women of exceptional character and 
great mental endowments. It is said that no man learns to spell 
after he is forty, and that only a limited few learn to read or write 
when beyond that age. The rudiments must be acquired when we 
are young, or they are never acquired ; this is the common experience 
of mankind. There is no time for study when the active, busy, strug- 
gling period in every man's life sets in. The fight for bread and but- 
ter shuts out all inclination for it. Our daily round of duties com- 
mands our time and faculties, often to the exclusion of even current 
reading, and always of hard mental labor and close thought. "We 
have no time to waste in this short, hurrying life. The early years 
are the golden ones for preparation ; not a moment should be squan- 
dered. It might be otherwise could we realize the sentiment of the 

old rhyme: »n i;i u 

*' " Could a man be secure 

That his days would endure 
As of old, for a thousand long years — 

What things might he know, 

What deeds might he do, 

What reap and what sow. 
And all without hurry or care ! " 

But it is otherwise ordained ; " our brief span " admits of no idle- 
ness, no loitering by the way. The to-morrows are too full to be 
crowded with the yesterdays. We must move on and forward. We 
must learn that every day is a new day, with its own distinctive and 
commanding duties, and can not atone for the yesterdays unim- 



OUR PUBLIC SCHOOLS. 217 

proved. To-morrow's tent must be pitched in new fields ; to-mor- 
row's thought in advance of yesterday's. We must keep up, or be 
crowded out. I congratulate you most heartily upon the grand op- 
portunities to which you are invited and the matchless age in which 
you live. I enjoin you to improve the one and appreciate the respon- 
sibilities and inspiration of the other. Never country had such a 
fortune, as men speak of fortune, as this — in its resources, its history, 
and majestic possibilities. Make every effort to put yourself in the 
line of your country's possibilities. Make every sacrifice to embrace 
the advantages so freely afforded you by the State, and in after-life 
you will not account them as sacrifices, but turn to them as genuine 
blessings ; for they will spare you many conflicts, many blunders, many 
heartburnings, and remove many hindrances in your onward path. 

You can afford to appear here in any department, from the pri- 
mary to tlie high school, poorly dressed, if your necessities require it. 
You can face the sharp and sometimes humiliating contrast with 
your more fortunate and better-dressed classmate, for be assured that 
attention to your studies, thought and industry in your work, and a 
hearty realization of your advantages and duties, will remove these 
differences in a few years. With your growth and progress your 
patched and shabby clothes will be wholly forgotten, or if recollected, 
remembered only to your honor, and your independence will stand as 
an example worthy of emulation by the struggling boys who are to 
follow you. The poor and shabbily clad boy, with clean face and 
clear head, seeking and appreciating the advantages of the public 
school, will win his way against all opposition. His future is assured. 
The want of the time is manly men, men of character, culture, and 
courage, of faith and sincerity ; the exalted manhood which forges 
its way to the front by force of its own merits. Self-earned stations 
are the best and most secure ; self-earned reputations the most 
lasting. What you have acquired fairly by your own brain and con- 
science and mind belongs to you. It is your throne, from which you 
can not be displaced ; your scepter, which you alone have the right 
to wield. It is your priceless possession. A man may get rich in a 
day or an hour, by the quick turn of fortunate speculation, but the 
only wealth which lasts and wears is that which builds steadily up 
through honesty, industry, and sacrifice. 

Nothing can supply neglected opportunities. You can not learn 
for one another. You can not borrow other men's mental equip- 
ment. You can not make progress with a substitute. Every man 
must do his own fighting. Individual labor and effort can alone 



218 SPEECHES AND ADDRESSES OP WILLIAM McKINLEY. 

supply your mental storehouse with the seed and fruit of learning. 
You can no more meet your duties and your destiny with other 
men's brains and energy, than you can meet your bill at the tailor's 
or the butcher's with other men's assets. There is no substitute for 
work yet discovered, either in the physical or intellectual world. 
Every labor-saving invention only imposes a higher form of labor and 
skill upon man, and every invention is the proof of increased intel- 
ligence. Indolence will not bring you new and worthy thoughts, any 
more than it will bring the husbandman rich fruit and golden grain. 
It requires digging and subsoiling and enrichment in both cases. 

The old New England minister had the true philosophy, as you 
will observe. It was one of the old-time customs to call in the 
minister in the springtime to invoke the blessing of Divine Provi- 
dence upon the piece of land which was to receive the seed for the 
autumn harvest. The old minister, being brought to the spot, paused, 
and, looking intently and thoughtfully about him before opening his 
prayer for a blessing, said : " No ! this land does not want a prayer ; 
this land wants manure ! " 

Avoid the dangerous tendency of the times toward superficial 
knowledge, which accepts shallow show rather than real acquirement. 
This tendency is in part accounted for by the mad spirit for gain and 
riches which is so prevalent in American society — not gain and riches 
acquired in the old-fashioned way, by industry and economy, but by 
gambling in stocks, speculation in wheat, by " corners " and " mar- 
gins." The old business habits, marked with caution and conserva- 
tism, are too slow for many of the present generation. Exact knowl- 
edge is the requirement of the hour. You will be crippled without it. 
You must help yourselves. Luck will not last. It may help you 
once, but you can not count on it. It is not permanent. Labor is 
the only key to opportunity. You are all here to do something, to 
work out a destiny, to discover the forces of Nature and make them 
serve man's uses and God's purposes. 

Morse sent his first telegraphic message from Washington to 
Baltimore in 1844, and these were the significant words he employed, 
" Wliat hath God wrought ! " This grand man and matchless in- 
ventor, using the force of Nature which God had wrought, gave to 
all mankind that which has bound the earth in electric network and 
made the nations almost as one family. 

Some one has said, " Of the more than 200,000 plants which 
grow around and about us, the largest majority are still accounted 
weeds." We call them such in our darkness and ignorance ; but, my 



OUR PUBLIC SCHOOLS. 219 

friends, what is a weed ? " Only a plant " (in the words of another) 
" whose virtues are yet undiscovered." It is more than probable that 
every one of these 200,000 plants will yet be turned to man's blessing ; 
that the power and purposes of all will be fully discovered. 

One thing essential to " getting on in the world " is to have a 
purpose. Life without it will prove a failure, and all your efforts 
barren of results. Drifting will not do. You must have a port in 
view, from which storms and tempests, while they may divert your 
course for the time, can only delay, not defeat, your ultimate lauding. 
Seek the calling to which you seem best adapted, and then do not 
expect too large results. Every legitimate calling is honorable, if we 
make it so, and leads to honor. Every young man should not enter 
what is called the "learned professions," for all are not fitted to 
prosecute them successfully. The avenues to useful employment, 
just as honorable and lucrative, are open upon every hand. The 
"learned professions " are no longer the exclusive stepping-stones to 
official honor and the State's highest trusts. I would rather be able 
to shovel sand well than be a blundering doctor, a pettifogging 
lawyer, or an unsuccessful preacher, whom no congregation would 
welcome. It is far better to be at the head of any honorable occu- 
pation, however lowly, than to be at the foot of the highest, no 
matter how exalted. Go at that which will secure you the front rank 
and give you a place in the front row. The rear rank and the back 
seat are doubtless indispensable in the march of mankind, but let the 
man occupy them who can do no better. 

Public instruction wields a power vast and far-reaching in its 
results. It was true, as the military attache wrote to his master, 
the lesser Napoleon, that " the schoolmaster, not the needle-gun, 
triumphed at Sadowa." Knowledge, ideas, convictions, guided by a 
good conscience, win more battles for mankind than bullet or shell. 
Prussia was regenerated, under the lead of Von Hardenberg and 
Von Stein, by the system of common-school education. In the 
United States, education has always been the National instinct ; an 
enlightened citizenship is now, as ever before, the hope of the Re- 
public. Our country owes much, immeasurably more than aught 
else, to her educational system, and we must appreciate more and 
more, as her growth continues and her power increases, that the hope 
of the Eepublic is in an educated and enlightened citizenship, which 
fears God and walks uprightly. I congratulate you upon the com- 
pletion of this imposing structure, and still more upon the grand 
uses to which it is dedicated. 
15 



PROSPECT AND RETEOSPECT. 

Address before the Mahoning Valley Pioneer and His- 
torical Association, at Youngstown, Ohio, September 
14, 1887. 

Mr. President : It gives me very great pleasure to meet with 
the Pioneer Association of the Mahoning Valley — a pleasure which, in 
other years, I have been compelled to deny myself. Your annual 
meetings are occasions of genuine pleasure to yourselves and your 
descendants, as well as instructive to those who, in the course of 
Nature, must soon take your places. We can not get on without a 
knowledge of the past; it is so closely related to the present and 
connected with the future ; it is the foundation upon which rests 
our possessions and possibilities, what we are and what we hope to 
be. The efforts and aims, the struggles and achievements of those 
who have gone before are our inspiration and guidance ; and they 
should be sacredly cherished and pondered, as we move along the 
pathway of destiny. 

There are two periods in the life of an individual, a community, 
or a nation : the one of activity, the other of reminiscence ; the one 
is the period of building and construction, the other of pause and 
retrospect ; the one accompanies youth and sturdy manhood, the 
other is the companion of well-ripened age and purpose realized. 
Both mingle here to-day. The older the nation, the community, or 
the individual, the richer and more varied the theater of reminis- 
cence. Our history is beginning to have age. The first actors are 
gone, or dropping by the wayside. The early struggles of the pioneers 
are passing from individual memory into the field of fable or tradition, 
thereby deepening our interest in the past and in those who were 
associated in its trials and triumphs. These frequent anniversaries 
manifest our growing love for reminiscence, and are elevating in tone 
and purpose, for they tell of work well done, and increase our pride 
for the men who wrought so excellently, in spite of trials and hard- 



PROSPECT AND RETROSPECT. 221 

ships from which the present generation would intuitively shrink. 
They recall to our minds the high character and courage, the lofty 
purpose and great sacrifices of our sturdy ancestors, and bid us 
imitate their virtues. Every anniversary, National or individual, 
thoughtfully and seriously observed, accomplishes positive good. It 
emphasizes the ties of home and country. It appeals to our better 
aspirations and incites to higher and nobler aims. 

Our Centennial Celebration of 1876 was a National pause ; it was 
a halt and a retrospect ; it was the picture of our beginning ; of the 
little we started with ; the much we then possessed and had accom- 
plished ; and suggestive of how much more we had yet to secure. It 
was the counting of the sheaves which we had garnered in the har- 
vest of the past. A hundred years of effort, of industry, economy, 
and activity were placed before the eyes of mankind, and who will 
be able to portray the blessings and benefits, the new thoughts and 
higher aims which came from that great scene of reminiscence? After 
all, it was little more than the homage of the present generation to 
the Nation's early pioneers, a generous and hearty testimonial to 
their wisdom and work. It was at once their eulogy and their 
monument. 

To-morrow, at Philadelphia, commences another great centennial 
reminiscence, another memorial to the pioneers, the celebration of 
the one hundredth anniversary of that majestic conservator of liberty 
and civilization, the Constitution of the United States, that great 
charter, which now, as at the time of its adoption, represents, more 
than any other human instrument, the best hopes and aspirations 
of mankind. It will be an occasion, too, for emphasizing the love 
and veneration we have for the fathers of the Republic, and our 
gratitude and obligation to them for the glorious inheritance we 
enjoy. 

This annual gathering, in a local and narrower sense, testifies our 
affection and love for the brave men and women who, moving be- 
yond the border line of civilization, opened up this rich valley to our 
possession, and dedicated it as a habitation for ourselves and our de- 
scendants, forever. To them we owe much, and these meetings per- 
petuate their memory, while our hearts go out in boundless gratitude 
for their courage, conscience, and achievement. 

History is only biography enlarged. The biographies of the first 
settlers of this valley make up the history of the time, the establish- 
ment of what has grown to be this prosperous city, and the founda- 
tion of the splendid industries which border your river, and which 



222 SPEECHES AND ADDRESSES OP WILLIAM McKINLEY. 

give to this valley its strength and glory. A biography of Colonel 
James Hillman, commencing in 1786 ; of Mr. Young, for whom this 
city is named; of Mr. Wolcott, his colleague and friend, beginning 
in 1796; of Mr. Brown, from 1797; of Uriah Holmes and Titus 
Hayes, of old Litchfield, Connecticut, would give the full history 
of the first settlement of this city and its environments; and the 
biographies of those who later came to strike hard blows for progress 
and civilization, many of whose names are well known among you, 
familiar names borne by their descendants, who have proved " worthy 
sons of noble sires," would complete the early and unwritten history 
of your birth and beginnings. 

In 1846 this city was a village of about 1,000 ; the capital invested 
in iron manufactures less than $20,000, the entire output of your coal 
160 tons per day. One hundred tons, it is said, came from the mines 
of David Tod, and sixty tons from Crawford, Camp & Co. Your 
population has grown to upward of 25,000; your capital invested 
in manufactures has reached between $5,000,000 and $6,000,000, and 
your products find a market in every State and Territory of the 
Union. You have made marvelous growth in the past thirty years, and 
attained a high industrial development and commercial rank ; your 
business men are the highest and best types of commercial enterprise 
and integrity. 

Every step you have taken is but the confirmation of the wisdom 
of the fathers ; every advance an acknowledgment of their foresight 
and direction. Your progress and prosperity is their highest testi- 
monial, their most lasting memorial. The pioneer made and left his 
impress wherever he halted or raised his cabin. It was the impress 
of a sterling, sturdy manhood. His history is written in human ac- 
tivity and human progress. He thought and acted with courage and 
independence. He stands as the representative of a great age, the 
sturdiest oak in the great forest of man. " Like the peak which first 
catches the morning light is crowned monarch of the hills," so the 
sturdy pioneer, who struck the first blow, is the crowned monarch of 
our civilization. 

Our general progress is simply wonderful. Few could have fore- 
seen it. Whittier pictured it in poetry, but subsequent advancement 
has made even that inadequate : 

" Behind the scared squaw's birch canoe 
The steamer smokes and raves ; 
And city lots are staked for sale 
Above old Indian graves." 



PROSPECT AND RETROSPECT. 223 

We have been surprised so many times with progress and inven- 
tion that wise men have come to regard nothing as impossible. 
Eighty-two years ago, Herman Husband, of Somerset County, Penn- 
sylvania, declared that the road, then only a pack-horse path over 
the mountains, would yet be paved all the way from Philadelphia to 
Pittsburg. He was jeered at by the foolish and wise alike. Within 
the lifetime of many who listened to him the road had been made 
and become obsolete ; the canal dug beside it became too slow for the 
demands of commerce, and the steam railway displaced them both. 

A statesman consj)icuous in public life for more than half a cen- 
tury, Mr. Fernando Wood, of New York, when Mr. Morse, the invent- 
or of telegraphy, asked of Congress a small appropriation to enable 
him to demonstrate the practicability of his invention, sneeringly op- 
posed it, characterizing it as visionary and the scheme of a disordered 
brain. Mr. Wood lived to witness this visionary scheme encircle the 
earth with its electric network and gather the nations of the world 
almost into one family. " Fulfillment follows so closely upon the 
heels of prediction, that the croakers are getting afraid to throw 
stones at the prophets and philosophers and scientists." They, too, 
are often " hit in the face by the facts themselves, while they are still 
doubting and protesting." 

The old men — I mean the older here assembled — have witnessed the 
most remarkable progress in the world's history within the circle of 
their own lives. They have seen us go from the pack-horse to the 
stage-coach ; from the canoe to the canal boat ; from the slow-sailing 
vessel to the steamship which swiftly and proudly rides the lakes 
and seas ; from six miles or less an hour in the old hack (and I re- 
member the ancient one which ran from this city to Enon Valley by 
way of Poland, my old home) to the splendid railroad coaches which 
smoothly glide through the country at forty miles or more an hour. 

You have witnessed the wonders of electricity — how man has 
taken the wasting elements of Nature and turned them to the grand 
uses of civilization, making them illuminate our streets, rivaling 
almost God's sunlight, and carry, in almost an instant of time, words 
across the continent and beneath the seas to foreign lands; and, more 
wonderful yet, have seen the same mysterious force bear the human 
voice a hundred miles or more with natural tone and inflection. All 
this and more has been accomplished within the brief span of many 
of my hearers' lives, and you are to be congratulated upon the mar- 
velous age in which you live. 

We can hardly conceive that the next generation will be so rich 



224: SPEECHES AND ADDRESSES OF WILLIAM McKINLEY. 

in fruitage, so prolific in invention, so marvelous in achievement, so 
wonderful in its work ; but who can tell ? There seem to be a brain 
and a conscience and a manhood always ready to rise up and discover, 
ut the appropriate moment, the forces and elements necessary in the 
onward march of mankind. The things you and I have seen, great 
as they are, may be insignificant contrasted with the things unseen 
and yet to be developed. The axe and the rifle, the courage and the 
conscience, the brain and the brawn, the faith in God of the pioneer, 
laid the foundations of the splendid institutions which make possible 
our matchless achievements. The Isew England schoolhouse, which 
came simultaneously with his cabin and stockade, was our flaming 
torch, which, carried grandly through the century, has filled the whole 
world with its light. 

To your own goodly heritage a gifted songstress of this valley, 
at one of your meetings, paid a beautiful tribute, which we may 
adopt as expressive of the love its sons and daughters feel for their 
old homes among you : 

" sweet Mahoning, like a queen 

Set crowned and dowered in the West, 
The wealth of kingdoms gleams between 
Thy jeweled brow and jeweled breast. 

" valley rich in stui:^y toil, 

In all that makes a people great, if. 

We hail thee Queen of Buckeye soil, 
And fling our challenge to the State ! 

" We hail thee queen, whose beauty won 
Our fathers in their golden years ! 
A shout for greater days begun, 
A sigh for sleeping pioneers." 

I bid this Association, which is organized to perpetuate the names 
and memories of the pioneers of this valley, and their heroic work, 
long life and abounding prosperity, and count myself most fortunate 
to be one of its members. 



227 



THE CLEVELAND ADMINISTRATION. 

A CAMPAiGiq- Speech at Daytok, Ohio, October 18, 1887. 

Mr. President and Fellow-Citizens : This is an especially 
good time for thoughtful consideration of the political situation — a 
good time to look into the future, and determine, if possible, what 
policies will best secure the progress and prosperity of the country 
and the welfare of the people. We are now one hundred years from 
the promulgation of the Constitution of the United States — a Con- 
stitution founded in the wisdom and patriotism of the fathers, which 
neither foreign wars nor internal conflicts have been able to destroy. 
It is therefore not only a fitting occasion for retrospect and thankful- 
ness, but a suitable time to take our bearings, make sure of our foun- 
dations, that we may pass along to the century which is to come with 
the Constitution unimpaired and strengthened, and the liberties 
which it guarantees firmly secured, and so demonstrate our fitness to 
preserve the Government which has accomplished so much for human 
progress and human rights in the first century of its existence. 

The Republican party as a National organization dates its history 
from 1856. It came into power on the 4th day of March, 1861, con- 
tinuing in control of the Executive branch of the Government until 
the 4th day of March, 1885. How well it discharged its long and dif- 
ficult trust mankind everywhere know, for no history of the country 
could be written without recounting the story of its splendid achieve- 
ments. It was born in the inspiring sentiment of Free Soil and Free 
Men, and has been faithful to its cause and steadfast to its principles 
— unyielding and unwavering in its devotion to the Union, to free- 
dom and equality, from that time until now. It has always been in 
the lead ; it never reversed its steps or turned its back upon the cause 
which inspired it, or the sublime purposes which brought it into ex- 
istence ; it has never turned aside from principle or duty. In war, or 
in peace, it has been firm, faithful, vigilant, and patriotic. It meets 
new questions with its old-time sturdy courage ; it grapples new con- 



SPEECHES AND ADDRESSES OP WILLIAM McKINLEY. 

itions, and keeps abreast with the wants and highest aspirations of 
the people. 

This is a State campaign, but the issues are National. The prin- 
ciples of the Kepublican party recognize no State lines, but are ap- 
plicable to all the States ; they recognize that whatever is good for 
the whole country benefits each of the several States. The questions 
of State policy and the administration of State affairs by a Kepub- 
lican Governor and Legislature have been so fully presented by 
Governor Foraker, in his admirable speech at Caldwell in opening 
the campaign, as to make it unnecessary for me to more than com- 
mend his comprehensive and conclusive statements to the careful 
consideration of the people of Ohio of all political parties ; confi- 
dent that none can read without being convinced of their truth. 

The platform made at Cleveland by the Democratic party wholly 
ignores the question of the taxation of the liquor traflric — a question 
of mere State policy, it is true, which never should have been made a 
party question, but which in former years and campaigns was forced 
by the Democratic party into a prominent issue. And so we observe 
that the Dow liquor taxation law, in the latest utterances of the Dem- 
ocratic party of Ohio, is passed over without a word of the condemna- 
tion which lately animated it, even to denunciations of iniquity and 
unconstitutionality. It was bitterly opposed to such legislation for a 
series of years. The party, in the fury of its passion, appealed from 
the people to the Legislature, and from the Legislature to the Su- 
preme Court, but now has come to acquiesce in and silently approve 
the law as a wise and judicious disposition of this vexed and trouble- 
some local question. All this but serves to demonstrate, with added 
force, what we have often said of the Democratic party — that it makes 
some progress, slow, to be sure, and, while reluctant to accept the sit- 
uation, after years of defeat and tribulation, yields to the march of 
ideas and surrenders to accomplished results. 

That the Eepublican party in its management of State affairs, all 
through its long years of control, has shown its fitness and capacity, 
will nowhere be controverted. It has met every question with courage, 
accepting defeat rather than surrender a position based upon princi- 
ple. It has discharged every obligation with fidelity ; called the State 
back to honest ways and clean methods ; lifted her finances from dis- 
honor ; raised her credit to the very highest ; it has reduced her ex- 
penses, and given to Ohio the highest financial and commercial rank 
in the sisterhood of States. So far, therefore, as State matters are 
concerned, we have no local issues confronting us; those which ex- 



THE CLEVELAND ADMINISTRATION. 227 

isted in the past have been wisely abandoned by our adversaries ; 
while in the conduct of the present administration we have nothing 
to explain or defend — everything to approve and commend. 

In the field of National politics the division between the two 
parties is wide ; their divergence is great and clearly defined ; and 
the intelligent discussion and understanding of the questions which 
divide them is just as essential to a State campaign as to a National 
one. The only difference is that the former is a contest by single 
detachments of the two great political parties, while the latter is a 
contest which engages the combined forces of both. We are engaged 
this year in a conflict of ideas and sentiments in a local field, but 
it is closely and inseparably connected with the wider and broader 
contest which next year will be waged on the same questions for su- 
premacy in the Nation. 

On the foremost question of the time — the integrity, security, and 
purity of the ballot — that is, the right of every citizen to vote, and to 
have his vote honestly counted — the position of the two parties is as 
widely separated as the poles. The Republican party, which ex- 
tended the suffrage and enlarged the power of the people, giving 
to every citizen a voice in the conduct of the Government, maintains 
that this great prerogative and right is inviolable, and must be re- 
spected everywhere throughout the Nation ; that the privilege of 
voting and having the vote truly counted and ascertained, must be 
afforded and secured to every citizen in every section of the country. 
The Democratic party, although in some of the States, like Ohio, this 
year, by platform declaration, pronounces for " the fullest safeguards 
to the ballot," yet in practice shamelessly violates its sanctity, dis- 
franchises majorities in communities and States, and boldly seizes 
and enjoys the fruits of these outrages and crimes. If called to ac- 
count before the bar of public sentiment, they neither deny nor justify ; 
like the highwayman who attacks you at night and robs you of your 
purse, they answer your helpless protest by asking, " What are you 
going to do about it ? " or they answer with that worn-out cry that 
" we are reviving the recollections of the war," and still continue to 
" wave the bloody shirt," as though such replies could be dignified into 
a defense or tolerated for a moment as a justification. Neither of 
them will much longer be accepted by an intelligent and conscien- 
tious people as a cover to these willful violations of constitutional 
rights. The remedy for the wrong may not come at once, but the 
Republican party will not be deterred in its determined purpose to 
right it. It is confessed and nowhere denied that in sections of 



228 SPEECHES AND ADDRESSES OF WILLIAM McKINLEY. 

the country, and notably in some States of the South, this practice is 
carried on openly and defiantly, and whole districts and States are 
deprived of their legal Representatives in Congress, and robbed of 
their rightful votes in the Electoral College. This has been open and 
notorious for eleven years ; it has occurred in every National election 
within that period ; it is both an old grievance and a new one ; it has 
not corrected itself, as some statesmen vainly hoped it might ; it is 
present with us now ; it was more manifest at the election last year 
than it was in 1884, or at any preceding Congressional election. 
This situation is not alone hurtful to the voter and the community 
thus deprived of its constitutional rights; it is not purely a per- 
sonal or a local grievance, but touches every voter of the Republic 
wherever situated ; it poisons the true sources of power, and over- 
turns the very fundamental principle upon which our political fabric 
rests. In many localities it substitutes the will of the minority for 
the majority ; it takes all consent and participation from the gov- 
erned. It manifests its greatest power in the elections for the House 
of Representatives and the Electoral College. All the people are 
counted in all the States to determine the State's representation in 
the popular branch of Congress, and in the Electoral College which 
makes the President ; the whole population is commanded to rise up 
and be registered and counted by the census- takers every ten years, 
to be reported to Congress, that it may determine upon that count 
the number of Representatives to which they are entitled and the 

■ number of Electors which during that decade they shall choose. 
When this is done, and these same people who have been thus 
counted, seek to participate in the choice of Representatives and 
Electors, they are commanded by these violators of the Constitution 

? to retire from the polls, and are wholly shut out from any participa- 
tion in the election. How long will this outrage continue? How 
long will the people of the other States suffer this gross inequality of 
citizenship to prevail — an inequality which deprives every Repub- 
lican in the Gulf States of his legitimate force in Government con- 
trol ? I answer : It will continue only until the people of this country, 
quickened in conscience and moz'al sense, shall elect a Congress of the 
United States honest enough, courageous and just enough, to employ 
its constitutional power, and control the mode and manner of electing 
Representatives to Congress, and take supervision of the whole sub- 
ject, to the end that no citizen shall anywhere be deprived of this 
priceless constitutional privilege and to the further end that this 
republican Government shall rest on the free and unrestrained con- 



THE CLEVELAND ADMINISTRATION. 220 

sent of the governed. And when I say this, my fellow-citizens, I am 
not recalling the bitterness of the war. 

In the language of our platform, we have placed the war with its 
hates and revenges behind us ; we are looking alone to the present 
and the future, and only insisting that the settlement made between 
Grant and Lee, at Appomattox, and which afterward found voice 
and recognition in the Constitution of the United States, shall stand 
irrevocable, and be respected and obeyed in every part of the Ecpublic. 
If this is reviving tlie recollections of the war, be it so, and be assured 
these war recollections, so called, will be revived until justice is done 
and the Constitution recognized in all its force in every part of the 
Kepublic. 

Next in importance is the question of the tariff. Fortunately, this 
year the Democratic party has taken a positive and definite position, 
and commits its leaders and followers firmly to the doctrine of a 
purely revenue tariff, not affording to our industries even incidental 
protection. The position of the Republican party this year, as in 
former years and in all times, commits its leaders and followers to the 
doctrine of a tariff which shall not only raise the requisite revenue to 
meet the expenses of the Government, but which shall be so levied as 
to give full and adequate protection to the laborer, the producer, and 
the industries of the United States. The line, therefore, is sharply 
drawn, and the Democrat who believes in protection must leave his 
party or be faithless to his principles. 

The Democratic party and free-trade organizations of the country 
were never so restless and aggressive as now. They are sustained by 
Mr. Cleveland, with all his power and patronage, and nothing but the 
highest vigilance and mightiest efforts of the protectionists will pre- 
vent alarming results to the country and its industries through the 
work of the next Congress. Already, if the dispatches in the Demo- 
cratic papers can be relied upon, President Cleveland with the aid of 
Speaker Carlisle (who will preside over the next House of Eepresenta- 
tives) and Mr. Mills, of Texas, who, it is announced, will be at the 
head of the \Yays and Means Committee, which controls the tariff 
question, is preparing a free-trade bill which is to be passed through 
the next House. The whole weight of the administration is to be 
exerted for its passage. 

So a tariff bill that is to strike down our productive industries has 
been, or is to be, made at Red Top, the country home of the Presi- 
dent, not in the hall of the House of Representatives by the chosen 
representatives of the people, but in the summer-garden of the Presi- 



230 SPEECHES AND ADDRESSES OF WILLIAM McKINLEY. 

I dent ; and tlien it is to be crammed down the throats of Democrats 
J as a strictly administration measure. We know in advance the char- 
I acter ,of a bill that will emanate from such a source. We know the 
President's views, for he has proclaimed them through his Secretary 
of the Treasury. He favors free raw material, including free wool. 
We know, too, the sentiments of Speaker Carlisle. He has not been 
in Congress twelve years without defining his views upon the revenue 
question ; he has voted for every free-trade measure proposed in that 
period from Fernando Wood's down to Morrison's horizontal ; while 
Mr. Mills has declared his adherence to the Robert J. Walker tariff 
of 1846, having offered it as an amendment to the tariff bill of 1883. 



J 



A law more destructive to the progress and prosperity of the country 
than the Walker tariff never was put upon our statute-books. We 
need not wait, therefore, for its official publication ; the records and 
utterances of its reputed authors reveal its contents; it will be free 
trade all along the line — an assault upon all our industries, a blow 
at all laborers and wage- workers, a leveling down of the prices of 
labor to the foreign standard. I assure you there never was a time 
more fraught with danger for the protective cause, which is the 
American cause, than the present. 

It is startlingly evident that the Democratic party throughout the 
country is concentrating upon the doctrine of free trade. Hitherto 
they have been seeking to hold, and have held, many of their adherents 
on the theory that they were not in favor of free trade, but could be 
relied on as confidently as the Republicans to maintain and protect 
the industries of the country. By this course of double-dealing with 
their followers they have held control in some of the States, and by 
the same policy secured control of the Nation in 1884. Mr. Randall, 
one of the most eminent Democrats of the country, in a debate in the 
House of Representatives, June 22, 1886, put this significant question 
to his Democratic colleagues on the floor : 

" Do you think that Mr. Cleveland would have been elected Presi- 
dent if the convention of 1884 had declared for free wool?" There 
can be but one answer to this pertinent and searching inquiry. If 
the country had believed it was the purpose of the Democratic party 
when once in power to introduce free trade, or a revenue tariff, 
nothing could have saved them from utter rout and defeat ; neither 
Burchard nor St. John, nor Curtis nor Schurz, nor all their associate 
Mugwumps, single or combined, could have beaten Mr. Blaine. Their 
true purpose was carefully concealed. New York, New Jersey, and 
Connecticut were made to believe that no disturbance of the pro- 



THE CLEVELAND ADMINISTRATION. 231 

tective system should occur if Mr. Cleveland was elected. Mr. Cleve- 
land himself was compelled to go to Paterson, New Jersey, that great 
industrial center, to make assurances to the laborers and producers 
there that they had nothing to fear from him or his party. These 
three States, which constituted the battle-ground of the National con- 
test, were made to echo with protection speeches from Democratic 
leaders. The Carlisles and Morrisons and the Hurds were not there. 
Their printed speeches elsewhere made found no circulation in the 
protective Centers of those great States. Eandall was there, and those 
who thought like him. Mr. Eandall himself exposed the deception 
and duplicity of the Democratic campaign of 1884, in a speech which 
he delivered in the last Congress. In a colloquy between Mr. Hewitt 
and Mr. Randall, the latter said : 

I know well the conduct of the gentleman in the Chicago Convention, and 1 
know that neither he nor any other man subsequently went on the stump in his 
State, or elsewhere, and made declarations in the direction of the bill of the Ways 
and Means Committee, as I conceive it to be. I not only know that, but I know 
also that, on the contrary, I was invited into his State, and spoke there in the 
exact line of the declarations that I have made here and make now. I know 
more : I know that in the canvass last year, which resulted in the election of 
Governor Hill, they took care to invite me again, and they invited also many 
other men who agreed with me in senti,ment as to the construction of the Chicago 
platform, while they failed to invite any man to speak there who thought as the 
gentleman from New York [Mr. Hewitt] now declares. And what was the result ? 
The result was that the Democratic majority in the State of New York increased 
from something over 1,000 in 1884 to 11,000 in 1885, and it was not on the free- 
trade doctrine. 

That is the truth of history from a Democratic leader, and reveals 
in all its nakedness the base deceit practiced upon the voters of 
the country by the New York Democracy and the National Demo- 
cratic party. "We have had the same situation to contend with in 
Ohio, but fortunately our people have, in the main, not been de- 
ceived. This year, however, there is j30 room for doubt as to the 
true position of the Democratic party. It is for free trade or a tariff 
for revenue only. 

A very general opinion jarevails that reducing the duty on im- 
ports necessarily reduces the receipts of the Government. It oftener 
produces just the opposite result and increases the receipts. Lower 
duties stimulate importations, encourage foreign purchases, and 
thus swell the revenue from customs sources. To be absolutely sure 
of reducing your revenues you must remove the duty wholly, place 
the foreign goods on the free list, or make the duties so high as to 



232 SPEECHES AND ADDRESSES OF WILLIAM McKINLEY. 

discourage and diminish importations. The reduction of the duty 
on wool in 1883, for example, increased importations, and no dimi- 
nution of the revenues was realized. The American system must 
be maintained in the fullest vigor; there must be no yielding of 
great principles ; the protection party must redouble its energy and 
stand with unbroken line against the well-organized forces of its 
adversaries. The sentiment of the country is with us ; the patriotism 
of the country is in our ranks; the labor of the country is our stead- 
fast ally. Every consideration of National interest and National 
growth, every aspiration for a higher manhood and a broader develop- 
ment, is enlisted in our cause. Let Ohio speak this year with in- 
creased emphasis for the beneficent system to which she is indebted 
for her matchless progress and development. 

The surplus money in the Treasury about which we hear so much 
to-day is there because the Democratic majority in the House of 
Eepresentatives, which alone has original jurisdiction of the subject, 
keeps it there, because it has proved itself incapable of reducing or 
diminishing it. During the administration of President Arthur, Mr. 
Folger, the Secretary of the Treasury, estimated, in one of his annual 
reports, that the receipts of the Government from the customhouses 
and from the collectors of internal revenue, if continued, would meet 
all the obligations of the Government, including the sinking fund, 
and pay off all the bonds which were due and payable before June 
30, 1887 ; and this was made to a Democratic House of Represent- 
atives. Similar information was given by Mr. Sherman when he 
was Secretary of the Treasury ; so that from time to time the Demo- 
cratic House of Representatives has been kept accurately advised of 
the receipts and expenditures of the Government and the demands 
upon the Treasury. 

The " awful surplus in the Treasury " in 1884, against which the 
Democratic leaders hurled such denunciations in that memorable 
campaign, was all there when President Cleveland came into office 
on March 4, 1885 ; it is still there, with added accumulation. What 
has been done to diminish the constantly increasing revenues? Ab- 
solutely nothing. Not an act has been passed, not a tax taken off, 
not a so-called " burden " removed. With a large working majority 
— it is hardly true to call it loorTcinxj majority — the Democrats have 
permitted the revenue laws to remain unchanged. 

The Morrison Bill, the defeat of which is still counted by Demo- 
crats as the cause of the excessive surplus in the Treasury, by the 
report of its author, which was only an estimate, would have cut down 



THE CLEVELAND ADMINISTRATION. 233 

the receipts of the Government $26,000,000 ; while, as a matter of 
fact, the reduced duties it proposed would have increased importa- 
tions and doubtless increased the revenues. With the exception of 
wool, flax, hemp, and other fibers, which were placed on the free list 
by this bill, and which would have insured a reduction of about 
$5,000,000, the other features of the bill would have increased the 
revenues, by stimulating imports. Every practical eifort to reduce 
the revenues in a substantial way was thwarted by those in control of 
the House of Representatives. The attempts of the Republicans and 
a small body of Democrats to secure recognition by the Speaker to 
offer a bill for consideration and action to take the taxes from tobacco, 
cigars, and snuff, and to remove special licenses to dealers and re- 
move the tax on alcohol used in the arts and manufactures, proved 
unavailing. The Speaker positively refused, in a letter, to recognize 
Southern Representatives for any such purpose, while Republicans, 
long before the date of the letter, were refused the poor privilege of 
offering a bill of like character. The tobacco tax alone would have 
cut down our receipts $28,000,000, and removed this enormous 
burden from the producers of American-grown tobacco, while upward 
of 75,000 cigar-makers would have been relieved of a burden which 
compels them, for want of the necessary capital, to work in factories 
as employes, instead of for themselves as they were wont to do before 
the tax was imposed. 

Such was the treatment accorded to those who honestly desired 
reduction of the revenue by the Democratic party in the management 
of the House — a tyranny of power which is almost without a parallel in 
our history. This party, since 1874, with the single exception of two 
years, from 1881 to 1883, has been in control of the House of Rep- 
resentatives, the only agency which, under the Constitution of the 
United States, can originate revenue bills — the only body which can 
initiate a movement for raising or removing taxes, and yet in all 
those years they have proved themselves unable to pass a single 
revenue bill ; while from 1881 to 1883, when the Republicans had a 
bare majority in the House, they passed a general tariff and internal 
revenue bill, which reduced the receipts of the Government over 
$60,000,000. 

The Democratic leaders of the House have shown themselves in- 
capable of dealing with the intricate questions of finance and revenue. 
They have not known where to begin, and, beginning, they have had 
no conception of the end or outcome. Why, this remarkable spec- 
tacle was presented at the first session of the Forty-ninth Congress : 



234 SPEECHES AND ADDRESSES OF WILLIAM McKINLEY. 

On the 17th of June, 1886, Mr. Morrison offered his tariff bill to re- 
duce taxation and provide against redundant revenue, which the 
House by a decisive vote refused to consider, and on the 22d day of 
June, within the same week, Mr. Morrison himself offered a proposi- 
tion to increase taxation by authorizing the imposition of an income 
tax to meet certain proposed governmental expenses. Both proposi- 
tions were supported by the leaders of the Democratic party in the 
House of Kepresentatives, including the Speaker. 

"What a contrast to the Kepublican method of dealing with the 
question of taxation and revenue ! From the conclusion of the war 
until it lost control of the House, the Eepublican party had reduced 
the revenue whenever the public treasury and public demands would 
justify. It had repeatedly reduced taxation, lowered import duties, 
and enlarged the free list. It had the courage to tax the people 
enormously to save the life of the Government, and when that great 
work was accomplished it commenced almost at once, and steadily 
continued, to relieve the people of unnecessary taxes. It has always 
provided sufficient in war or peace, and by a judicious foresight and 
intelligent statesmanship provided against an accumulating excess ; 
never imposing a burden upon the people when unnecessary, and 
always removing it when the exigency for it had passed. . The truth 
is, the party in control is not in accord with itself — has an excess of 
, leaders, which divide and demoralize it. '• 

The President, too, has contributed as little as the House toward 
the reduction of the revenues, and is as responsible as the House for 
the maintenance of whatever excessive and redundant revenue we 
have in the Treasury. He withheld his signature, and therefore de- 
feated the proposition, requiring the Secretary of the Treasury to pay 
out $3,000,000 monthly in liquidation of United States bonds ; he 
withheld his signature from the Eiver and Harbor Bill, a measure 
of National importance, which has resulted in great injury to the 
commercial interests of the country. This bill would have taken 
from $10,000,000 to 814,000,000 from the Treasury, which would 
have been employed in the construction and improvement of the 
rivers and harbors, the great water ways of the country, and would 
have furnished employment to thousands of industrious workmen, 
unlocking that large sum of money, and sending it, with its blessings, 
to the people, who were ready and willing to give their labor for it. 
He vetoed the Dependent Pension Bill, which Avould have sent cheer 
and comfort to thousands of worthy and disabled soldiers, who are de- 
pendent upon private charity for the bare necessaries of life, and 



THE CLEVELAND ADMINISTRATION. 235 

would have released from the county poorhouses tens of thousands of 
men who have worn out their lives in the country's service, and are 
now basely denominated " county paupers." This bill would have 
absorbed some of that surplus wliich the Democratic party is unable 
to dispose of. He has vetoed unnumbered bills for the erection of 
public buildings, appropriations for which would have put in circula- 
tion some of the idle money now in the Treasury, and thereby greatly 
benefited the workingmen of the country. Every one of these propo- 
sitions was wise and patriotic, but not one so deemed by our self-willed 
and obstinate President. He would not let the people's money be thus 
employed, but finds a better way, a more agreeable way, according to 
his manner of thinking, by calling in the bonds not yet due and pay- , 
able, not yet matured, and paying high premiums for them. His 
party in the House even refused to consider the Educational Bill, ■; 
which involved an expenditure of many millions of dollars for the 
benefit of all the people, in all the States, to extend light into the 
dark places. This, too, would have consumed some of the hateful 
and terrible surplus. 

A question which confronts us in the near future (assuming that 
excessive revenues are to continue) is, What shall become of the In- 
ternal Revenue System of the country ? I am frank enough to say 
that, so far as I am concerned, if one of the two systems is to be sur- 
rendered, the raising of revenue by duties on imports, or from internal 
taxation (that is, taxing the products and industries of our own coun- 
try), the latter should give way before the constantly accumulating 
surplus, and not the former. In such an event the internal revenue 
should go and the tariff system remain. This is no new position for t 
the Republican party. It is to be found in many of the platforms of 
the States ; in the reports and votes of Republican Representatives 
and Senators ; and over and over again this policy in part has been 
tendered by the Republican minority to the Democratic majority in 
Congress. If it is the abolition of " war taxes " that the party wants, 
no surer way can be found, for the internal revenue system is pecul- 
iarly a creation of the war, and was one of its real necessities. When- 
ever resorted to in the past by the fathers, it was to meet a great 
National necessity resulting from war which had preceded, or to meet 
the expenses of a war in which we were about to engage. The first bill 
of the kind in our history went into effect in 1792. It was in force 
but ten years, and was repealed upon the recommendation of Thomas 
Jefferson, made in his first message to Congress. The language he 
used at that time is not v.ithout force and application now. He said : 
16 



236 SPEECHES AND ADDRESSES OF WILLIAM McKINLEY. 

The remaining sources of revenue will be sufficient to provide for the support 
of the Grovernment. to pay the interest on the public debt, and to discharge the 
principal, in shorter periods than the laws or the general expectation had con- 
templated. War, indeed, and untoward events, may change the prospect of 
things, and call for expenses whjch the imports can not meet ; but sound princi- 
ples will not justify our taxing the industry of our fellow-citizens to accumulate 
treasures for wars to happen we know not when, and which might not, perhaps, 
happen but for the temptation offered by that treasure. 

For these reasons, given by President Jefferson, the law was 
promptly repealed. 

The next internal revenue law was enacted during the Administra- 
tion of President Madison, and upon his recommendation, to provide 
the means for carrying on the second war with England. This sec- 
ond law remained in force but four years ; it was repealed upon the 
recommendation of President Monroe in his first message to Con- 
gress. In that paper he used the following language : 

It appearing in a satisfactory manner that the revenue arising from imports 
and tonnage, and from the sale of public lands, will be fairly adequate to the 
support of the civil government ; of the present military and naval establish- 
ments, including the annual augmentation of the latter, to the extent provided 
for ; to the payment of the interest on the public debt, and to the extinction of 
it at the time authorized, without aid of internal taxes, I consider it my duty to 
recommend to Congress their repeal. To impose taxes when the public exigen- 
cies require them is an obligation of the most sacred character, especially with a 
free people; the faithful fulfillment of it is among the highest proofs of their 
virtue and capacity for self-government. To dispense with taxes when it may be 
done with perfect safety is equally the duty of their Representatives. 

This would seem, my fellow-citizens, to be sound doctrine, and 
coming, as it does, from eminent Democratic sources, it ought to fall 
with great weight upon Democratic ears. But their Ohio platform 
of this year seems determined to continue these " war taxes." This 
course is only in line with the war-time practices of the party. It 
was bitterly opposed to these taxes when they were enacted, when 
such taxes were really necessary, and when without them the Gov- 
ernment could not have brought the Civil War to a successful termi- 
nation. Now, that they are no longer needed, it as violently opposes 
their repeal. The Democracy seem to have forgotten their plat- 
form in 1870, made the first day of June of that year, in the city 
of Columbus, when they resolved " that the internal revenue system is 
unendurable in its oppressive exactions and should be immediately 
rescindedy What new light has dawned upon the Democracy of 
Ohio ? This was their position eighteen years ago, when the neces- 
sity for internal taxation was imperative and absolutely essential to 



THE CLEVELAND ADxMINISTRATION. 237 

meet the maturing obligations of the Government and maintain its 
credit ; when the debt hanging over us and the annual interest charge 
were something enormous ; when we were but five years removed 
from the close of the war and nine years away from resumption, then 
they were in favor of their " immediate repeal," and declared them 
" unendurable." Now that we have more money in the Treasury than 
we need, they want them to stand and continue evermore. Their 
habit of being wrong at the right time, and right at the wrong time, 
is here well illustrated. 

If the sentiment of the country is averse to abolishing the tax 
upon distilled spirits used as a beverage — and that is clearly the pre- 
ponderating sentiment — and the receipts from that source be not re- 
quired for the ordinary expenses of the Government, it might be well 
to set apart the sum so received, or such part thereof as may be neces- 
sary, for educational purposes. To adopt a measure like the Blair 
Educational Bill would make this luxury contribute to the elevation 
and education of the people. No more philanthropic use could be 
made of this vast sum ; no purpose to which it might be dedicatel 
could secure such beneficial results. The Blair Educational Bill car- 
ries an appropriation of $77,000,000 to aid in the support of common 
schools in the States, Territories, and District of Columbia. Of that 
sum seven millions was to be distributed in 1886 ; ten millions in 
1887 ; fifteen millions in 1888 ; thirteen millions in 1889 ; eleven 
millions in 1890 ; nine millions in 1891 ; seven millions in 1892, and 
five millions in 1893. What a splendid National offering that would 
be to the cause of intellectual development and to the education of 
the youth of the masses ! This proposed distribution to the States 
and Territories was not based on population, but upon illiteracy. If 
based upon population, the Northern States would have received 
$47,000,000 and the States of the South $23,000,000 ; but under this 
bill the South receives $53,000,000 and the North $18,000,000 ; and 
of this sum the North would contribute $54,000,000 and the South 
$23,000,000. This would indicate that the North had no animosity 
toward the South, but is willing, out of the abundant treasure which 
it has, and contributes to the public treasury, to aid the South, im- 
poverished by war, to educate and elevate the masses of her people 
and prepare them for the high duties of citizenship. The tax on 
spirits might well be dedicated to this high and laudable cause. 

On the subject of foreign immigration the Republican party of 
Ohio is fearless and outspoken. It leads in platform expression upon 
this question ; and it is gratifying to know that every Republican 



238 SPEECHES AND ADDRESSES OF WILLIAM McKINLEY. 

convention held since, has met the question in the line of the Ohio 
declaration. Iowa, Pennsylvania, and New York have all pronounced 
against indiscriminate immigration, so that now, practically, for the 
first time in our National history, parties are brought face to face 
with this important problem in our National life. It is true that 
years ago the Chinese invasion of California received the well-con- 
sidered action of Congress, resulting in a law limiting that character 
of immigration. Now the general question must be met and solved. 
It will not come at once ; time, patience, and thought will be re- 
quired. It is, however, a marked advance toward the desired goal, 
when the political parties come to pronounce for it in their platform 
declarations. It shows the drift and tendency of public thought, and 
manifests a growing sentiment which must necessarily and always 
precede public law. The sentiment of Ohio Republicans is so clearly 
expressed in their platform that I venture to read it to you at length. 
It may have escaped your notice. Here it is : 

While we adhere to the public policy under which our country has received 
/reat bodies of honest, industrious citizens, who have added (o the wealth, prog- 
ress, and power of the countiy ; and while we welcome to our shores the well- 
disposed and industrious immigrant who contributes by his energy and intelli- 
gence to the cause of free government, we view with alarm unrestricted immigra- 
tion from foreign lands as dangerous to the peace and good order of the country 
and the integrity and character of its citizenship. We urge Congress to pass such 
laws and establish such regulations as shall protect us from the inroads of the 
anarchist, the communist, the polygamist, the fugitive from justice, the insane, 
the dependent pauper, the vicious and criminal classes, contract labor in every 
form, under any name or guise, and all others who seek our shores, not to become 
a part of our civilization and citizenship, who acknowledge no allegiance to our 
laws, no sympathy with our aims and institutions, but who come among us to 
make war upon society, to diminish the dignity and rewards of American work- 
men, and to degrade our labor to their level. Against all these our gates should 
be closed. 

This declaration requires no explanation or argument ; it speaks 
for itself ; it embodies the best sentiment of the country of every 
political faith, for it is based upon justice to all and looks to the 
highest welfare of all. If it can be embodied into practical legisla- 
tion, it will go far toward removing many of the evils which exist in 
our society ; will secure the peace and good order of the country, and 
insure the continued happiness, freedom, independence, and advance- 
ment of the people. 

Much is claimed by the Democratic party in the matter of the so- 
called reduction of the expenses of the Government under Mr. Cleve- 
land's administration, by a Democratic House of Representatives. 



THE CLEVELAND ADMINISTRATION. 239 

This reduction is more apparent than real. It is simply a show of 
economy, and very shortsighted and indefensible, as you will observe. 
It consists largely in withholding appropriations which the law com- 
mands shall be made, as pay of the public officers of the Government, 
appropriating a sum less than the salaries provided by law. This 
idle performance, in the alleged interest of economy, compels our 
officials to go into the Court of Claims and sue the Government for 
their unpaid balances, which always results in a judgment ; and then 
these same gentlemen in the House appropriate to pay the judgments. 
Still another method for making a show of economy by the Demo- 
cratic House is to make inadequate appropriations for the public- 
service, thus compelling the Republican Senate to increase the bill as 
it comes from the House, as a matter of public necessity, without 
which the wheels of the Government would be stopped. This is a 
favored way of demonstrating Democratic economy and Republican 
extravagance. This has nowhere been better stated than by Senator 
Beck, of Kentucky, a leading Democrat in the Senate of the United 
States and the ranking Democrat upon the Committee on Appropria- 
tions of that body, who said, on June 30, 1886 : 

I thought of saying some other things, but 1 believe I will not. As far as 
this bill is concerned it has received all the care that the gentlemen on the Ap- 
propriations Committee, who have had long service, could give it. I agree, and I 
am sorry to have to agree, to much of the criticism of the Republican Senators ; 
that there are very many items inserted by the Senate Committee in the bill that 
ought to have been inserted in the House of Representatives. After holding the 
bill back for six months and sending it to the Senate the last days of the fiscal 
year, so that we can hardly consider and inform ourselves so as to answer ques- 
tions intelligently, we have a resolution sent here to-day to extend appropriations 
of the expiring fiscal year into the next year, whether they are in accordance with 
the needs of the service for the next year or not, in order to prevent the wheels of 
the Government from being stopped by reason of the delay that has occurred in 
the passage in proper time of those appropriation bills. A Republican Senate, it 
is alleged, with much show of justice, is compelled to make many additions to 
carry on the Government decently, because gentlemen at the other end of the 
Capitol are withholding what is absolutely needed, as stated in their oificial com- 
munications and personal interviews by the Democratic officers of the Govern- 
ment, as necessary to carry on the Government properly. I sit in that Committee 
with a certain sense of mortification at the delay, which I think needless, and I 
confess I feel humiliated when I hear Republican gentlemen say, what I have 
heard stated on this floor more than once in the last day or two, that very likely 
many of the appropriations are diminished so that gentlemen at the other end 
of the Capitol can go before the country and tell how economical they were 
and how extravagant this end of the Capitol was, when this and many other items 
have to be inserted as amendments for the very purpose of enabling the Govern- 



240 SPEECHES AND ADDRESSES OF WILLIAM McKINLEY. 

ment to be carried on at all. I can make no excuse for the delay. We know 
that for the fiscal year 1888, when this Congress expires by its own limitation on 
the 4th day of March, 1887, every one of these appropriation bills has to be passed 
before that time ; and when the Committee on Appropriations of the House of 
Representatives had their labor lightened this year by placing in the hands of 
other Committees the Consular and Diplomatic Bill, the Indian Bill, the Post- 
Office and other important bills, which formerly encumbered them ; and now on 
the last day of the fiscal year the Sundry Civil Bill is not even here. The Legis- 
lative, Executive, and Judicial Bill passed the House almost in the closing week 
of the fiscal year, and is in the condition in which we have it before us. The 
Naval Bill is not even considered, the Deficiency Bill is not looked at, while the 
Fortification Bill has not been touched. I am not proud of the record, I do 
not propose to defend it. 

All of which I earnestly commend to our Democratic friends, to 
illustrate the hypocrisy of a Democratic House, and to the end that 
it may shake their faith in Democratic professions of economy and 

reform. 

As to the Civil Service, the Ohio Republican platform takes a 
strong and progressive stand. It not only requires the rigid enforce- 
ment of the present law in its letter and spirit, but demands such 
other and additional legislation as will tend to improve and elevate 
our public service and give to it the purest and most capable officials. 
In this, as in all its declarations, it keeps abreast with the best 
thought of the country ; its purpose in this direction is earnest and 
sincere, and it is to be hoped the Legislature of Ohio will heed this 
sentiment and embody this purpose into public law. The good work 
heretofore inaugurated by the Republican party in the Nation must 
be carried to completion. No other party can, or shows any disposi- 
tion, to do it. The Ohio Democratic platform has no word of ap- 
proval for the Civil Service Reform movement ; no commendation of 
the President for his eilorts in this direction ; a feature of his admin- 
istration, more pretentious than any other, is thus silently condemned. 
My fellow-citizens, I must conclude. The struggle this year is 
not only to re-elect Governor Foraker by a handsome majority, and a 
Legislature which shall be Republican, but for the Republican cause 
generally, now and hereafter. We have the past to inspire and en- 
courage us, and the future full of hope and promise, with nothing to 
fear. We have but to be honest with the people ; honest with each 
other ; true to our guiding principles, never forgetting the interests 
of the masses, taking counsel of the people, whose unerring instincts 
see the right, and success is assured. We have the satisfaction of 
knowing that, in all that has been won by Republican leadership and 



if 



THE CLEVELAND ADMINISTRATION. 241 

Eepublican courage iu the past, there is not a conscience or a voice 
in the civilized world which does not approve and commend it. Our 
opponents even, as we get further removed from the contest in which 
the achievements were won, and in which they lost, gratefully applaud. 
The past is secure; its glory fills the world with wonder and admi- 
ration, and inspires mankind with new hopes and grander aspira- 
tions. The future is now our field ; let us look to it ; it opens with 
glorious possibilities, and invites the party of ideas to enter and pos- 
sess it. Let us appeal to the highest judgment and reason of the 
people, and our appeal will not be in vain. 
In the language of Lincoln : 

Why should there not be a patient confidence in the ultimate justice of the 
people? Is there ahy better or equal hope in the world? In our present differ- 
ences, is either party without faith of being in the right ? If the Almighty Ruler 
of nations, with his eternal truth and justice, be on your side or our side, that 
truth and justice will surely prevail by the judgment of the great tribunal of the 
American people. 

To that judgment we confidently commit our claims. 



THE AMERICAN EARMEE. 

Address before the Ohio State Grange at Canton, Ohio, 

December 13, 1887. 

Mr. President and Gentlemen of the Ohio State Grange : 
I esteem it a very great honor to have been invited by the Committee 
having in charge the arrangements for your annual gathering, to 
participate in the welcome which the citizens of Canton, through the 
Mayor, have extended to you. I am gratified to join my neighbors 
and fellow-citizens in that greeting, and unite with them in tendering 
to you the cordial hospitality of our homes, and beg to express the 
genuine pleasure which all of us feel by being honored with your 
presence. I count myself most fortunate, even at the discomfort of 
a long railroad journey, in having the opportunity afforded me this 
evening to meet face to face this body of thoughtful and sturdy 
men, representing a calling which is not only the most ancient of 
human vocations, but at the same time the largest and most impor- 
tant of all. 

The gentlemen whom I address, and the wider constituency which 
stands behind them, are the most self-sustaining and independent of 
our population. There can be no independence like that of the men. 
who own the land they cultivate. They are, in jooint of real necessi- 
ties and actual comforts, scarcely dependent on the rest of mankind, 
while the rest of mankind is wholly dependent on them. Farmers 
could manage to exist rather generously, if not luxuriously, without us, 
but we could not well exist without them. 

Agriculture may fairly be classed as the foundation of all in- 
dustries; it is intimately related to every field of labor. Xo matter 
what our employment, we must draw our life every day afresh from 
the soil, and our daily necessities can be supplied from no other 
source. All trade, all commerce, all business is but the result, direct 
or remote, of the industrial pursuit in which you are engaged. Our 
city in its earlier and later progress is peculiarly the offspring of agri- 



THE AMERICAN FARMER. 243 

culture ; from it has been drawn our chief income ; it has been the 
source of our revenue. We have been doing little else for thirty 
years but meeting the demands and supplying the wants of the 
farmers. Canton is therefore devotedly attached and deejDly in- 
debted to the industry which you represent, and is justly sensible of 
the fact that upon your success depends her prosperity. 

You have made wonderful improvements in your department of 
human activity in the last thirty years. Every decade records ad- 
vancement and demonstrates marked and commendable progress. 
Agriculture no longer relies upon mere physical force ; it requires of 
its successful devotees culture and scientific knowledge. These are 
becoming, if not as essential, certainly of approximate importance 
with the harrow, the plow, and muscle. Manual labor alone does not 
always secure the best crops or the largest and most lasting results. 
A wise and discriminating intelligence and a knowledge of chemis- 
try will oftentimes increase the annual yield to the farmer, add profit 
to his product, and secure permanent advantages to his laud. An 
ignoramus makes no better farmer, in the higher and better sense, 
than he makes a lawyer, a doctor, or a preacher ; and any kind of a 
man will not make a good- agriculturist any more certainly than he 
will make a successful merchant, a wise banker, or a skilled me- 
chanic. Brain has become as essential as brawn. Both are neces- 
sary, the one almost useless without the other, and each should go 
hand in hand in the pathway of conquest over the old and cruder 
modes, to the achievement of new and better methods. I do not 
mean to say that the successful agriculturist can get on without 
labor ; that lies at the very foundation of success in your calling, as 
in any other, but it is no longer the exclusive factor to successful 
farming. Nor are the old ways to be abandoned or forsaken for new 
and doubtful experiments. 

Cato, the eloquent orator and great general, wrote a treatise on 
agriculture, and his wise maxims are just as applicable in the present 
day as when written two thousand years ago. He said : 

The first thins? to do is to plow thoroughly; the second, to plow; the third, to 
manure ; the fourth, to choose good seeds and plenty of them ; the fifth, to root 
out all weeds. 

I take it, gentlemen, that this embodies the fundamental philos- 
ophy of successful farming, and has not been improved upon by any 
agricultural teacher or Farmers' Institute. Cato, like most of his 
people, advocated small farms and thorough tillage. 



24:4 SPEECHES AND ADDRESSES OP WILLIAM McKINLEY. 

But, Mr. President, I will not be expected to talk to you upon 
the technicalities of your profession. With these you are too famil- 
iar, and have too much practical knowledge, to be imposed upon by 
a novice ; and were I to undertake to tell you what I know about 
farming, the limit of your patience and indulgence would soon be 
reached, possibly even before my limited knowledge was exhausted. 
I choose rather to speak to you, for the little time I shall occupy, of 
the magnitude of the interest to which you are devoted, its marvelous 
growth, and the satisfactory contrast it presents in this country with 
other and competing nations. 

There are seven and three quarter millions of people in the United 
States engaged in agriculture, more than one eighth of our entire pop- 
ulation, far exceeding in number those engaged in any other profes- 
sion, numbering twice those employed in manufactures, and seven 
times greater than those employed in conducting trade and transpor- 
tation. Therefore, you constitute the largest body engaged in any 
single calling in the United States, while the value of the agricul- 
tural products of this country exceeds that of any other nation in the 
world. In 1880 the value of American agricultural products was 
$3,400,000,000, a sum almost incomprehensible to the ordinary mind; 
while Russia, with her immense territory, and with a hundred mil- 
lions of people, produced agricultural products valued at $3,020,000,- 
000. Germany stands third on the list, having produced $2,280,000,- 
000 ; France follows Germany very closely, and shows a gross value 
of $2,220,000,000; the Isles of the Sea, $1,210,000,000; Austria, 
$323,000,000 ; while Spain, Australia, and Canada, with their united 
agricultural products, exceed a little more than one half of those of 
the United States. In 1880 the capital invested in manufactures in 
the United States was only twenty- three per cent, or less than one 
fourth that invested in agriculture. 

It is not generally believed, indeed, if it is known, but is never- 
theless the fact, and a rather surprising fact, too, that hay is the most 
valuable of all our products. According to the census of 1880, the 
amount cut exceeded 36,000,000 tons, covering more than 30,000,000 
acres. Sorghum is one of the newer agricultural products, and yet 
in 1880 more than 28,000,000 gallons of molasses were made from 
it. With the new and modern inventions said to have been put to 
practical tests, and in actual operation in Europe, this may yet be- 
come one of the more valued and important agricultural products. 
Then the " Irish potato," as it is improperly called — it being pecul- 
iarly American, for Ireland is indebted to us, not we to Ireland, for 



THE AMERICAN FARMER. 245 

it, and which next to the cereal grains furnishes food to the greatest 
number of persons — has developed a remarkable growth as well as 
grown in popular favor; for in 1880 we raised four bushels of pota- 
toes for every man, woman, and child in the United States, aggregat- 
ing a little over 203,000,000 bushels, and all consumed at home. 

The most astonishing development, to my mind, is that touching 
the extent of the live stock raised in this country. The figures ex- 
pressing it are enormous. AYe raised, in 1880, fifty-six and three 
quarter million hogs, forty-six million cattle (eighteen and a half 
million were milch cows), forty-five million sheep, twelve and a half 
million horses, and two million mules. As some one has put it, if 
the live stock on Uncle Sam's ranch were ranged five abreast (each 
animal estimated to occupy a space five feet long), and marched 
around the world, the head of the procession would meet and over- 
lap the tail. Our exports of living cattle in 1880 exceeded 112,000,- 
000 in value, and in the same year we exported hams and bacon to 
the value of $50,000,000. 

Our wool clip of 1880 weighed 240,000,000 pounds, more than 
double the amount of wool produced in the United Kingdom. In 
1883 and 1884, 396,000,000 pounds of wool were consumed in the 
United States, and 320,000,000 pounds of it were grown at home. I 
know of no good reason why the other 76,000,000 pounds should not 
be of our own home-grown product, from our own flocks and fields, pro- 
duced at home by our own people. As a wool-producer the United 
States stands first ; in 1886 the values of her clip were $72,464,201 ; 
Australia second, 147,358,000 ; the Argentine Eepublic third, $35,946,- 
855 ; Eussia fourth, $33,615,200 ; Austria-Hungary fifth, $30,363,000 ; 
France sixth, $16,654,000; and Germany seventh, $15,582,000. 

Our dairy products are prodigious. Four hundred thousand tons 
of butter were made in 1880, averaging over fifteen pounds to every 
man, woman, and child in the country. I can not vouch that all 
this was pure, sweet, unadulterated farmers' butter; some of it was 
doubtless oleomargarine, butterine, or other substitute. When we 
come to take the next census there will be a rightful division of this 
product, thanks to the oleomargarine law of the last Congress, and 
we will know how much of the genuine and how much of the imita- 
tion we produce as well as consume. 

The United States stands first in the production of cereals, to the 
value, in 1886, of $1,161,215,453. Eussia comes next, with $1,109,- 
159,673. Germany is third, the values being $750,148,109; and 
Austria-Hungary fourth, with $648,043,475. Great Britain, includ- 



246 SPEECHES AND ADDRESSES OF WILLIAM McKINLEY. 

ing India, Australia, and Canada, and all her other colonies and de- 
pendencies, only produces cereals to the value of $437,382,910, which 
is 18,000,000 less than the production of France. We raise thirty 
per cent of the grain and fifty per cent of the cotton of the world. 
Ohio produces one tenth of the wheat of the United States, and 
stands fourth among the thirty-eight States in general agricultural 
products. 

This is but a partial statement of the wonderful progress of 
American agriculture — an incomplete showing of its results — after a 
little more than a century of development, but it is enough to bring 
to every one engaged in the industry a feeling of genuine pride and 
satisfaction, and is certainly a cause for National congratulation. 
Your profession is not only marvelous in the figures which it pre- 
sents and in the advancement it has made, but it stands equal in 
dignity and honor with the highest of human callings. 

The greatest in every department of life and in every age have 
been its proud votaries ; the statesman, the lawyer, the doctor, the 
divine can engage in it without loss of self-respect or dignity; it 
seems rather to enhance both. The historians of China tell us that 
even to this day the sovereign of that emjiire, the despotic monarch 
of nearly one third of the human race, in order to show his high 
regard for agriculture, once in the year holds a plow and turns a fur- 
row in the presence of his court and all the high dignitaries of the 
land. The majority of our Pi'esidents were or had been farmers, and 
on leaving their lofty seats of power returned to the cultivation of 
the soil. It has come to be the rule that our ex-Presidents, if they 
would preserve their high place in the public estimation, must either 
live a lite of ease or return to the peaceful and healthful pursuit of 
agriculture. In the popular view no other actual occupation seems 
so appropriate or so well to comport with the dignity of their pre*- 
vious station. 

Washington, on his farm at Mount Vernon, directing his labor, 
engaged in actual work himself, is remembered with almost equal 
pride as when engaged in performing illustrious services on the field 
of battle, or presiding over the young Eepublic as its first President. 
Webster, at his country seat at Marshfield, was every inch the true 
American statesman, and as secure in the people's affection and as 
high in public regard as when in the State Department he maintained 
with conscious power her dignity and honor. Marshall, most emi- 
nent of jurists, was the same commanding figure at " The Oaks " as 
when, equally modest and unassuming, he expounded from the Su- 



THE AMERICAN FARMER, 247 

preme Bench the immortal principles of constitutional law. Every- 
body recalls witli pleasant memory John Adams on his farm at Quincy ; 
Jefferson cultivating the soil at " Monticello " ; Madison in his sweet 
and tranquil old age at " Montpelier " ; Jackson at " The Hermitage " ; 
Garfield spending his brief Congressional vacations in harvesting at 
Mentor ; and no one thinks of them as having soiled their high repu- 
tations or marred their dignity by these pursuits. Van Buren was as 
proud of his estate at Kinderhook as of his diplomacy at the capital. 
Clay with his short-horns at Ashland was as much a statesman and 
great leader, everywhere honored and esteemed, as when addressing 
listening Senates, or moving public audiences by his majestic periods 
and resistless eloquence. 

I congratulate you upon your present commanding and honorable 
position before mankind. You have sustained the ancient reputation 
of your craft. You are imperial in your power. Kothing which in 
reason you can ask of the National Congress or State Legislatures, for 
the advancement of the interests you represent, can be long withheld 
or refused, for whatever improves the situation of the great agricul- 
tural classes feeds the life-springs of National character. Numerically 
the largest class, it has been demonstrated in the experience of the 
whole world that the social, political, and moral character of countries 
mainly depends upon the condition of the tillers of the soil. 

It has been said that " the political character of any country is 
shaped and molded by the tenure on which land is held and culti- 
vated." Tell me how the land is held, and I can tell you almost to a 
certainty the political system of the country, its form of government, 
and its political character. When land is divided into small farms, 
the property, as a rule, of those who till them, there is an induce- 
ment, ambition, and facility for independence, for progress, for wider 
thought and higher attainments in individual, industrial life. Over 
such a population no government but a free one, under equal laws 
and equal rights, with equal opportunities, can exist for any length of 
time. The small farm thoroughly worked was the ancient model, 
commended by the early sages and philosophers; as old Virgil put it, 
" Praise a large farm, cultivate a small one." We must avoid in this 
country the holding of large tracts of land by nonresident owners for 
speculative purposes, and set our faces like flint against alien land- 
holding in small or large tracts. Our public domain must be rcdedi- 
cated to our own people, and neither foreign syndicates nor domestic 
corporations must be permitted to divert it from the hallowed pur- 
pose of actual settlement by real farm.crs. It is highly gratifying to 



( 



248 SPEECHES AND ADDRESSES OP WILLIAM McKIXLEY. 

know that the large majority of the farms in the United States are 
cultivated by their owners. Out of our four millions of farms, nearly 
three millions are operated and worked by their owners ; eight per 
cent only of the total are worked upon shares. Ohio, with her 
247,000 farms, has 200,000 occupied by their owners — over eighty per 
cent. With this condition existing and maintained, we need have no 
fear of the future, of its safety and independence. v 

One of the great lessons of history is that agriculture can not rise ) 
to its highest perfection and reach its fullest development without 
the aid of commerce, manufactures, and mechanical arts. All are es- 
sential to the healthy growth and highest advancement of the others ; 
the progress of one insures the prosperity of another. There are no 
conflicts, there should be no antagonisms. They are indispensable '\ 
to each other. Whatever enfeebles one is certain to cripple the rest. >/ 
" Washington, in his last annual address to Congress, in 1796, re- 
ferred to a former successful endeavor to encourage agricultural 
progress and diversity in industry, and emphasized his views by de- 
claring the object " of too much consequence not to receive a continu- 
ance of their efforts in every way that shall appear eligible." 

President Jefferson wrote, in 1816, that " he who is now against 
domestic manufactures must be for reducing us either to a depend- 
ence upon that nation [Great Britain] or to be clothed in skins and 
live like wild beasts in dens and caverns." 

In his fourth message, John Quincy Adams said that " the great 
interests of an agricultural, commercial, and manufacturing nation 
are so locked in union together that no permanent cause of prosperity 
to one of them can operate without extending its influence to all the 
others." 

Benjamin Franklin, the great sage and intense patriot, writing 
from England in 1771, suggesting various plans for the improvement 
of our agricultural condition, said, " Here in England it is well 
known, that wherever a manufacture is established, which employs 
a number of hands, it raises the value of land in the country all 
around it." 

President Monroe, in his inaugural address in 1817, said : " Pos- 
sessing as we do all the raw materials, fruit of our own soil and in- 
dustry, we ought not to depend, in the degree we have done, on sup- 
plies from other countries. While we are thus dependent, the sudden 
event of war, unsought and unexpected, can not fail to plunge us into 
the most serious difficulties." 

Jackson, in 1823, declared that " upon the success of our manu- 



THE AMERICAN FARMER. 249 

factures, as the handmaid of agriculture and commerce, depends in 
a great measure the independence of our country." What was true 
sixty-four years ago is true to-day ; and the words of the hero of New 
Orleans are fully as applicable to the present situation as to the time 
in which he lived. 

Let us accept the advice of the fathers of the Republic, heed 
their patriotic counsels, walk steadfastly in their faith, preserve the 
mutual helpfulness and harmony of the industries, and maintain our 
independence, National, industrial, and individual, against all the 
world, and thus advance to the high destiny that devolves upon us 
and our posterity. I bespeak for you a pleasant and profitable meet- 
ing, and, with thanks and best wishes to all, bid you good-night. 



FKEE KAW MATEKIALS. 

Address before the Home Market Club, at Banquet in 
Hotel Vendome, Boston, Mass., February 9, 1888. 



[As reported for the Home Market Club.] 

Mr. President and Gentlemen of the Home Market Club : 
If I believed it to be entirely courteous to the gentlemen who have 
invited me to address them to-night, I would be content, after the 
very clear and convincing speech of Senator Sherman, to rest the 
cause of protection, confident that no adequate reply can be made to 
his logic, and no successful resistance to the strong positions he has 
taken and enforced. Very much like his illustrious brother in the 
famous march he made to the sea, he drives everything before him, 
and leaves very little for those who follow behind him. [Great ap- 
plause.] 

A revenue reformer who had recently visited your State said to 
me a few days ago that Massachusetts had already received all the 
benefits she could from protection, and that now her interests as well { 
as her inclinations lay in the other direction — that of free trade. 
Enlarging upon it, he was forced to confess that the manufacturing! 
thrift and activity everywhere seen in your Commonwealth, the high 
rank you had taken and the perfection reached in production, were 
the outcome of the system of American protection, but noAV free 
trade, or its equivalent or approximation, would place you in a posi- 1 
tion of commanding advantage over those portions of the country 
marked with less industrial development. If I were to admit the 
truth of my friend's discourse — which I do not — the situation would, 
in simple language, be this : Massachusetts owes her proud industrial! 
position to a protective tariff, which she has enjoyed by the help of i 
other States not so far advanced in manufactures, and which have 
neither so long nor so advantageously enjoyed its benefits. Now she - 
does not need it for herself, and is unwilling that any of her sister J 



FREE RAW MATERIALS. 251 

States shall profit by its assistance and enjoy its blessings. She used 
it to attain her high commercial position and manufacturing devel- 
opment. The newer States are now moving upward on the ladder 
which carried her before and above them. Now, as my friend would 
have it, she is ready to push the ladder down, with all that is upon it. 
[Laughter.] This I know to be a base and ungenerous reflection 
upon Massachusetts, which her industrial people will be quick to re- 
sent, and which nothing in her behavior in the past would justify. 

Such a sentiment, surely, has no place among the industrial 
classes, nor among those whose capital and labor are employed in 
manufacture. The truth is, that your State, as well as all of New 
England, needs as much protection against foreign competition as 
ever it did. [Applause.] You have some advantages over many 
of the States, but you labor under some disadvantages not common 
to other portions of the country. Steam has compensated for the 
absence of water power. Your lands are not agricultural, like ours. 
You have no mines. Your avenues inviting capital and tempting 
labor are therefore limited, and anything which affects unfavorably 
your great workshops affects injuriously your Commonwealth, from 
one end of it to the other. Your present and future, therefore, de- 
pend upon the continued success of your manufactures, and they in turn 
depend for their support upon a generous home market. What you 
want are consumers and purchasers of the products of your factories. 
You get them in the West and the South, and will continue to en- 
joy them, provided these sections are permitted to prosper, and shall 
be encouraged by a suitable industrial system which will encourage 
new enterprises and promote the further development of their re- 
sources. 

If protection, as a broad National policy, is not sound in prin- 
ciple and wholesome in practice, then it ought to be abandoned, pro- 
vided something better is offered in its place. The real interest 
which the people of New England, as well as the people of other 
sections, have in this question is not narrow or sectional merely, but 
general and National. If any other system will better promote in- 
dustrial growth, conserve National ends, reward individual effort and 
the just aspirations of the people, then it should be adopted, and 
adopted at once. In the discussion of this question it is assumed, 
either through ignorance or willful intention, that the revenues se- 
cured from our tariff are wholly unnecessary, and indulged in largely, 
if not solely, for the purpose of enriching the manufacturer, forgetting 
or ignoring the fact that a government can not be administered with- 

ir 



252 SPEECHES AND ADDRESSES OF WILLIAM McKINLEY. 

out taxation and income, and that it is a part of the citizen's duty 
to contribute each his share for the support of the government which 
gives protection to his property and person, and security to his enter- 
prises and investments. 

It requires over $300,000,000 every year, which must be raised 
from some source and in some way, to meet the expenditures and ob- 
Hgations of our National Government. This sum must be provided 
for, so long as the current demands remain undiminished. This in- 
come must be secured either by direct taxation or by duties upon 
imports. The former system has never met with favor among our 
people, and has never been resorted to except in case of war neces- 
sity, and during all preceding periods until now has been speedily 
abandoned when the necessity had passed away. It has never been 
held as a permanent system for raising revenue. It has been regarded 
always as merely temporary, to meet immediate exigencies, for which 
the prevailing system of taxation was for the time found inadequate. 
It has been the accepted National policy, from the beginning of the 
Government, to raise our current and necessary revenues from im- 
port duties. If the internal revenue system was repealed, or such 
part thereof as might be safely spared, the question of the surplus 
which now faces us would vex us no longer, and the requisite rev- 
enues to meet the demands of the Government would easily and with 
little burden upon our citizens be provided from customs sources. 
[Applause.] 

I will not pause to discuss the wisdom of the one system over the 
other. I take it for granted that there is a consensus of opinion, cer- 
tainly in New England, and which opinion is growing rapidly through- 
out the country, that if one or the other must yield, the internal 
revenue system must go and the tariff system remain, in the line of 
the long-established practice and policy of the Government. No ex- 
tended argument is demanded to satisfy an American audience that 
taxation upon foreign products imported in competition with do- 
mestic ones is better and more easily borne than taxation upon our 
own. Having, then, agreed that the settled policy of the Government 
is to raise its revenue from import duties, the simple question of the 
adjustment of these duties, upon what articles they shall be placed, 
is the one essential consideration. One line of political thought 
would raise this revenue by imposing the duty or the tax upon the 
foreign articles imported here which do not compete with those pro- 
duced here — that is, select out from the group of imported articles 
those which are necessary to the wants of our people, and for which 



FREE RAW MATERIALS. 253 

we must rely upon the foreign supply, and upon sucli articles place 
the tax or duty ; and let the articles which come from abroad in com- 
petition with our domestic production enter our customhouses free, 
or practically so. This is the exact position of the revenue reformer, 
and is a fair statement of what constitutes a revenue tariff. 

On the other hand, another line of political thought, advocated 
by the friends of protection, insists that the articles which we can 
not produce in this country, and which we must import from abroad, 
save and except luxuries, shall come in duty free, and those things 
which are made or produced abroad, and which are sent here to com- 
pete with what we make and produce here, shall bear the burden and 
the duty — the noncompeting foreign product to be imported duty 
free, the competing one to bear the duty. Shall the former or the 
latter line of thought be adopted as our National policy? is the ques- 
tion now upon us for consideration and judgment. This is the real 
question, and it can not be obscured by that other and different one 
of reducing the surplus. [Applause.] The issue was never so 
sharply drawn as now, so that every citizen who wants to express his 
exact views in his ballot can do so with absolute certainty. 

The President has emphasized the issue and marked the line of 
contest. We accept his challenge, and appeal from him to the peo- 
ple, the only sovereign we tolerate or recognize in the Uuited States. 
[Applause.] Now, gentlemen, is the revenue-tariff policy, so called, 
or the protective policy, the best for our system and citizenship ? If 
freedom from taxation makes the imported article cheaper to the 
consumer, because, as it is asserted, the tax is added to the cost, then 
it seems to me there is every reason why those articles which we can 
not produce and must have should be absolutely free at the custom- 
houses, and go untaxed to the people ; and surely there ought to be 
no question in the mind of any patriotic citizen, that the tariff should 
be levied upon the competing product rather than the noncompeting, 
which is imported, and thus foster the interests of our own people 
and protect them in their chosen vocations. Let the burden and the 
duty be put upon the products made by our foreign competitors, and 
competition at home between our own manufacturers will regulate 
with justice to the consumers the price of domestic commodities. 
This seems so jjlain as to render elaboration unnecessary, and has 
been vindicated in every department of industry sustained by protec- 
tion. The enemies of protection are fighting the system in detail, 
and are leveling their artillery for the present at what are termed the 
crude materials used for the more advanced manufactures. 



254 SPEECHES AND ADDRESSES OP WILLIAM McKINLEY. 

"What are the arguments presented by the advocates of free raw 
material, including wool? I have examined them with some care, 
and do not find them always either logical or consistent. The gen- 
eral statement is made that free wool will remove great burdens from 
our manufacturers by giving them low-priced wool, and in the end 
benefit the people by giving them cheaper clothing. This character 
of argument is made to the manufacturer and general consumer, 
while the same gentlemen, in presenting the question to the farmers 
and producers of wool, declare that free wool will increase and not 
diminish the price, and cite to them statistics which show that wool 
has been cheapest under high tariffs and commanded the highest 
prices when the tariffs were the lowest. If free wool would increase 
the price to the grower, it is difficult to discover how at the same 
time it can reduce the price to the manufacturer ; but a slight incon- 
sistency of this kind would not disturb the New England reformer. 
[Applause.] 

An intelligent manufacturer expressed himself before the Ways 
and Means Committee, two or three years ago, as follows : 

If the duty were taken off wool absolutely to-day, the first effect of it would 
be the lowering of the price of the wool of this country to the level of the price of 
wool in other countries. That would be the first effect. The discouraging effect 
of it would be to destroy the sheep-raising industry in this country, and then the 
price of wool abroad would rise. I wish some of the gentlemen from Rhode 
Island would paste this in their hats ! [Laughter and applause.] 

But if free wool will secure cheaper clothing to the people, by the 
same process of reasoning, cloth duty free and untaxed ready-made 
clothing, will diminish the price still further, and give to the con- 
sumer the very consummation of low prices and cheap wearing ap- 
parel. If every consideration but the mere cheapness of the fabric be 
discarded, then no reason can be found why, with free wool, there 
should not come free cloth and free clothing. [Applause.] Things, 
however, are sometimes the dearest, when nominally they are the 
cheapest. The selling price of an article is not the only measure ; 
the ability to buy, the coin with which to purchase, is an important 
and essential element, and must not be dismissed from our considera- 
tion. If a man is without means and without employment, and 
there is none of the latter to be had, everything is dear to him. The 
price is of the smallest consequence, however cheap, if it is beyond 
his reach. If my only means is my labor, and that is unemployed, 
whether things are cheap or dear is of little moment to me. 

If the policy of protection is not to be Just in its application and 



FREE RAW MATERIALS. 



255 



National in its scope, based upon broad principle, then the sooner it 
is relinquished the better. It can not be sustained, and ought not to 
be, for one class or interest or section, and denied to others equally 
within the contemplation of its purpose. The raw-materials class 
have rights which can not be ignored. Those who think otherwise 
forget that the advanced product is only the manipulation of the less 
advanced, and the less advanced of the still less finished product, with 
human labor as the chief factor in all ; and protection upon the one 
can not be successfully and permanently maintained without protec- 
tion of the other. 

The occupants of the fifth story, Mr. Chairman, are not safe if the 
dwellers beneath them are endangered, and all are imperiled if the 
foundation is shattered or removed. If the manufacturers are to have 
free wool that it may be cheaper, I beg to inquire, At whose expense ? 
Of course, at the expense of the producer, who is scarcely able to live 
to-day at the present rate of duty upon the foreign product. If free 
raw material will cheapen the product of the factory and the mill, of 
course by the same logic the products of the mill will be cheapened, 
if competing products are admitted free of duty. The products of 
the New England mills, the New Jersey potteries, and the Pennsyl- 
vania furnaces have no higher claim upon the fostering care of the 
Government and the considerate concern of Congress than the iron 
mines of the Northwest, the wool producers of Ohio, the coal of West 
Virginia and Maryland, the clay of Missouri, the salt of Michigan and 
'isew York, the marble of Vermont and Connecticut, and no unselfish 
patriot thinks so. I assure you there is no wayside station in the 
work of cutting down duties when once entered upon. No reason 
will be found, surely none will be accepted, why we should stop half- 
way in our so-called mission for the overburdened consumer. Pro- 
tection will not respond to the beck of one interest and turn a deaf 
ear to the earnest calls of another. Seven and three quarters millions 
of farmers — more than one eighth of our entire population— will not 
tolerate a discrimination against their products, and that might as 
well be understood now. Our farming population has firmly resisted 
the seductive voice of the free trader ; has stood faithfully by the 
system of protection because it was right, as a broad policy looking to 
industrial independence. They only claim equal benefits with all 
others ; more they have never asked, and less they will not have. No 
advantage over their fellow-citizens engaged in other branches of 
business is desired, no unjust or unequal drawbacks or discrimination 
upon them will be tolerated. 



256 SPEECHES AND ADDRESSES OF WILLIAM McKINLEY. 

They want you, and all who are engaged in manufactures, to live 
and prosper ; employ mechanics and artisans, extend your work- 
shops, and thus furnish them a home market for the products of 
their fields and flocks, and in turn they want your goods. They are 
not troubled about the increased cost of woolen fabrics as a result of 
the tariff. The President's sympathy for them is uninvited and 
gratuitous. [Applause.] He groans beneath the burden which he 
declares they bear, and which they have never felt, and, without 
commission or authority, assumes to speak for them. The wool 
growers were not slow to repudiate his tender of sympathy, and send 
forth burning words of protest against his free-trade theories. They 
were the first to sound the alarm, and I want them to have due 
credit; they sent out their message of condemnation twenty-four 
hours before Mr. Blaine's was wired from Paris [applause], and 
before Senator Sherman's masterly arraignment of the President's 
message was made on the floor of the United States Senate. [Ap- 
plause.] They talked like men who knew their business, and with 
a courage assuring and refreshing in these days of cowardly indecision. 

I congratulate you to-night that the manufacturers of New Eng- 
land and of the whole country, and the wool growers of the United 
States, are harmonious and united ; that they stand with columns 
closed and line unbroken, ready for the " fray." Their meeting at 
Washington, on the 14th of January, has demoralized their enemies, 
and brought confusion to those who believed their interests were to 
be at war. They lie on parallel lines, and their union and harmony 
will bring results helpful to both. 

The manufacturers of New England, and more particularly the 
skilled labor employed by them, need a protective tariff, and require 
it equally with the industries and labor of other States. It is im- 
peratively demanded, not only here but in every section of the Union, 
if the present price of labor is to be continued and maintained. Your 
industries can not compete successfully even in this market with the 
industries of England, France, Belgium, and Germany, without a 
tariff, so long as the price paid labor here exceeds the price paid labor 
there from 50 to 75 per cent. This inequality can only be met by a 
tariff upon the products of cheap labor high enough to compensate 
for the difference. You can not compete except upon equal condi- 
tions and with like cost of the competing product. Free trade will 
either equalize the conditions by reducing your labor to that of the 
rival labor on the other side, or it will close your factories and work- 
shops and destroy home production and competition. Free trade 



FREE RAW MATERIALS. 257 

means cheap labor, and cheap labor means diminished comforts — 
diminished capacity to buy, poor and enfeebled industries, and a de- 
pendent condition generally. And every step taken in the direction 
of free trade, beginning with free raw material, is an advance, and 
a very long one and a very straight one, in the direction of reduced 
wages, and a changed condition of the American workingman, not 
confined to the labor engaged in preparing raw materials for use, 
but will widen, and in the end enter every department of labor and 
skill. 

I would secure the American market to the American producer 
[applause], and I would not hesitate to raise the duties whenever 
necessary to secure this patriotic end. [Applause.] I would not 
have an idle man or an idle mill or an idle spindle in this country, 
if, by holding exclusively the American market, we could keep them 
employed and running. [Applause.] Every yard of cloth imported 
here makes a demand for one yard less of American fabrication. 

Let England take care of herself, let France look after her inter- 
ests, let Germany take care of her own people, but in God's name let 
Americans look after America ! [Loud applause.] Every ton of steel 
imported diminishes that much of home production. Every blow 
struck on the other side upon an article which comes here in com- 
petition with like articles produced here makes the demand for one 
blow less at home. Every day's labor upon the foreign products sent 
to the United States takes one day's labor from American working- 
men. I would give the day's labor to our own, first, last, and all the 
time, and that policy which fails in this is opposed to American 
interests. To secure this is the great purpose of a protective tariff. 
Free traders say. Give it to the foreign workman, if ours will not per- 
form it at the same price and accept the same wages. Protection- 
ists say No, the workingmen say No, and justly and indignantly 
resent this attempted degradation of their labor, this blow at their 
independence and manhood. 

The difficulty with some of our friends is that periodically they 
become alarmed at the clamor of their enemies, and, under fear for 
the safety of their investments, yield ; yield essentials ; yield to the 
injury of the cause to which we are devoted, and to which we are in- 
debted for unexampled prosperity, when they should stand with firm- 
ness and courage, beating back their assailants, whose success, if at- 
tained, would insure only widespread disaster. Every concession made 
is interpreted as a confession of excessive tariff benefits — a plea of 
guilty to the indictment of the free traders ; every inch of ground 



258 SPEECHES AND ADDRESSES OF WILLIAM McKINLEY. 

surrendered weakens the line and impairs our commercial and busi- 
ness independence. I welcome as allies in our great cause men from 
all political parties, but look with distrust upon our so-called friends 
who, in order to maintain their party relations, are ever demanding 
concessions and compromises, which will, if granted, be followed by 
the complete overthrow of our system. It is better, if you are pro- 
tectionists, to get into the party which advocates that principle, and 
you will not be embarrassed by party considerations in conflict with 
your real principles. 

In the days of the war, when a citizen wanted to be counted in 
fact on the side of the Union, he voted with the party which was 
pledged for its preservation, and which stood in the trenches and on 
the battle line of the contest. So now, in this great crisis between 
free trade and the American system of protection, founded by the 
fathers and so eloquently maintained by Clay and Webster and Choate, 
every friend of the principle and every foe of free trade should follow 
that party organization which carries the flag of protection, and which 
acknowledges no other [applause], and whose adherents are unre- 
strained by a divided allegiance ; who are not compelled to balance 
between party and principle, not obliged to be constantly twisting 
and turning to keep on good terms with both, and as constantly 
failing in the difficult feat. [Applause.] 

The reckless assault made by the President should be resisted with 
firmness and courage, resolutely and fearlessly, and his wild and 
illogical attacks should be met with dignity and refuted with reason 
and results ; and it is gratifying to know that resistance, earnest and 
aggressive, has started in Massachusetts, and will be persevered in to 
victory. He recommends with savage fury the reversal of the policy 
which is as old as the Government itself, which such statesmen as 
Washington and Jefferson, Jackson and Lincoln, were pleased to 
commend and support by the force of their great names and charac- 
ter — a policy which every student of American history knows has 
been vindicated by its triumphs and by the blessings with which it 
has crowned us. It is left to the President, standing apart from 
his illustrious predecessors, to frown with contempt upon a National 
policy which gave us the money, in large part, to carry on the war for 
the Union to a successful and glorious conclusion [applause] ; that 
has enabled us to meet all our obligations in peace, to establish the 
highest credit in the commercial world, and to achieve a manufactur- 
ing rank second to none. He calls this system " vicious, illogical, and 
inequitable." We could frown back. We could make faces, too; but 



FREE RAW MATERIALS. 259 

that would be scarcely decorous or dignified ; aye, it would be wholly 
unworthy a cause whose worth is in its work, and to whose trophies 
every citizen can jDoint with pride and satisfaction. 

There is no serious danger to the system from without ; the real 
danger is from within. We have demonstrated our strength and 
power when harmonious and united. For twenty-seven years it has 
stood without interruption, maintained by its friends, and twelve 
times in as many years it has resisted the assaults of its enemies, 
without loss or shock, and it will continue impregnable so long as 
we are without division or dissension in our own ranks. Our dan- 
ger comes from those who have been and are the beneficiaries of 
the system, who are listening to the delusive suggestion of free raw 
material, and with sujjreme selfishness are disposed to turn a will- 
ing ear to the enemies of a protective policy ; and while solicitous for 
their own protection against foreign rivals, and unwilling to give it 
up, are consenting, and I fear in some cases counseling, its with- 
drawal from other interests, thus assisting in driving a wedge in the 
very foundation of a system which, if persisted in, will in the end 
overthrow the entire edifice. I warn you against these false teachers, 
who appeal to individual greed and narrow selfishness ; they are sow- 
ing the seeds of destruction and death to a system which has produced 
results which are the wonder of the present century, and which, if 
continued, will be the marvel of the next. 

What is the meaning of all this outcry ? Who is hurt by the 
tariff against which we hear such loud denunciations ? Is any Ameri- 
can citizen? Is any American interest? From whom and whence 
does the complaint come ? Not from the farmer, nor the wage-earn- 
er, nor the manufacturer, nor the capitalist whose money is invested 
in industrial enterprises ; nor from the consumer, for he points to 
the improved quality of the product and reduced price as the reason 
for his faith. The agitation is inspired by our foreign rivals and 
those who sympathize with them here. They want our markets ; they 
want to diminish our production ; they would place us in a position 
of dependence, from which we fought our way like a young giant more 
than a century ago [applause], and to which we will not willingly and 
without stern resistance return. [Applause.] 

The party that tries to lead us back will be buried beneath popu- 
lar indignation. [Applause.] From whom does this complaint 
come? It comes from the scholars, so-called [laughter], and the 
poets, from whom we gladly take our poetry, but whose political 
economy we must decline to receive ; from the dilettanti and would- 



260 SPEECHES AND ADDRESSES OF WILLIAM McKlNLEY. 

be diplomatists, the men of fixed incomes ; it comes from the men 
who " toil not, neither do they sj^in " [great applause], and from those 
who " do not gather into barns " [laughter], who have no invest- 
ments except in bonds and mortgages, who want everything cheap 
but money, everything easy to secure but coin, who jirefer the cus- 
toms and civilization of other countries to our own, and who find 
nothing so wholesome as that which is imported, whether manners or 
merchandise, and want no obstructions in the shape of a tariff placed 
upon the free use of both. [Applause and laughter,] 

A college-bred American (who happily does not represent the 
educated men of the country), who had traveled much in Europe, 
whose inherited wealth had enabled him to gratify every wish of his 
heart, said to me a few years ago, with a sort of listless satisfaction, 
that he had outgrown his country. What a confession ! Outgrown 
his country ! Outgrown America ! Think of it ! I felt at the time 
that it would have been truer had he said that his country had out- 
grown him ; but he was in no condition of mind to have appreciated 
so patent a fact. He had no connection at all with the progressive 
spirit of his country. He had contributed nothing to its present 
proud position, or to the ujjlifting and welfare of his fellows ; he had 
no part in the march of the Eepublic. The busy, pushing American 
lad of humble origin educated at the public schools, had swept by 
him, as effort and energy always lead, and leave the laggard behind. 
His inheritance was not invested in productive enterprises, nor was 
his heart located where it sympathized with the aspirations of the 
people with whom he was born and reared. His country had got so 
far ahead of him that he was positively lonesome, out of line and 
wandering aimlessly along, to the rear of the grand procession. He 
was a free trader, for he told me so, and complained bitterly of the 
tariff as a burden upon the progressive men of the country, and that 
it severely handicapped him. "When I pushed him to particularize 
the trammels which the tariff imposed upon him, as one of our sixty 
millions of people, lie raised his hand, which had never been soiled 
by labor nor touched by honest toil, tightly incased in a French kid, 
and said : " These gloves come enormously high here, sir, by reason of 
the tariff ; the duty is actually added to their foreign cost, which falls 
heavily upon us consumers." What answer could I make to such an 
indictment ? How could I repel such a blow at our great industrial 
system ? Discussion would have been idle. I could only regard him 
in speechless silence, and gaze upon him with a feeling mixed with 
curiosity, pity, and contempt. [Applause and laughter.] I heard 



FREE RAW MATERIALS. 261 

later on that he became a Mugwump ! [Laughter.] That was the 
newest manifestation of protest against the iniquitous system of tarifE 
which we had in America. It gave the poor fellow the opportunity 
of leadership, for all are leaders in that narrow circle of free-trade 
spirits, and there my friend found a fit asylum for a man who had 
" outgrown his country." [Great laughter and applause.] 

There is another class of our citizens who have spent so much / 
time abroad, who have so lost the aims and purposes of party that \ 
they have for twenty years been unable to embody in a vote " their ; 
honest opinions, or even a fraction of them." They, too, are to be ' 
pitied, and command our sympathy and commiseration. For twenty 
years there have been no issues for which political parties contended 
which embodied their honest opinions. They counted the great issue 
of the honest payment of the public debt against threatened repudia- 
tion as beneath their thoughtful concern ; the resumption of specie 
payments against the bitter opposition of the inflationists was to them 
as an idle and unmeaning issue ; the supj^ression of the suffrage in 
entire States and Congressional districts, whereby the voice of Kew 
England is overborne and rendered forceless, is sneered at by these 
gentlemen as beneath the earnest purpose of a great political party 
to correct. These are not ideas worthy of their votes and support, 
and it is therefore not surprising that these gentlemen confess that 
they feel strongly attracted to the President ; and you would expect 
them to discover in him, as they have, " the best representative of " 
the higher type of Americanism that can be found since Lincoln was 
snatched from us." 

An entire absence, they assert, of either worthy political aims or 
of representative Americans from Lincoln to Cleveland. If true, 
what a National humiliation ! Grant and Sherman and Sheridan must 
be either of the low type, or have been forgotten by these gentlemen. 
The general estimate of these men among patriotic citizens — and this 
estimate will be vindicated in history — is, that they were of the highest 
and best type of American citizenship, whose matchless qualities and 
lofty Americanism saved America to the world, and the freest and 
best Government to mankind forever. [Applause.] 

Garfield and Sumner, Wilson and Wade, Hayes and Arthur, Blaine 
and Sherman, Logan and Hawley, Hoar and Dawes, and a host of 
illustrious names, are wholly ignored ; they do not measure up to the 
" higher type " of American manhood as embodied in the character of 
their beloved hero. I do not wonder that men representing such 
ideas can find no party worthy of their support, and no party stand- 



262 SPEECHES AND ADDRESSES OP WILLIAM McKINLEY. 

ing for their exact views. I tliauk God it is so ; and that it is so, 
and that such ideas can not grow and thrive on free soil and among 
free men, is the proudest monument of our intelligence, our patriot- 
ism, and our civilization. [Applause.] 

Gentlemen of the Home Market Club, I am glad to have been 
with you, and, in saying good-night, I bid you sustain the American 
system of protection, that you may maintain the dignity and inde- 
pendence of American labor, that you may preserve the American 
home, the American schoolhouse, and American possibilities to the 
present and coming generations. [Tremendous applause.] 



THE PURCHASE OF GOVERNMENT BONDS. 

Speech in the House of Representatives, Fiftieth Congress, 

February 29, 1888. 

[From the Congressional Eecord,] 

The House being in the Committee of the Whole for the consideration of the 
bill (H. R. 5,034) to provide for the purchase of United States bonds by the Secre- 
tary of the Treasury, Mr. McKinley said — 

The exact purpose of this bill, Mr. Chairman, is not altogether 
manifest upon its face. If it be to give to the Secretary of the Treas- 
ury authority to use the surplus money in the Treasury for the pur- 
chase and redemption of Government bonds, and this be its sole pur- 
pose, then I answer that the authority already exists fully and amply, 
and has existed since March 3, 1881. The bill under consideration 
neither increases, diminishes, nor qualifies the authority of the Secre- 
tary of the Treasury under existing law. It neither adds to nor takes 
from the power that is to-day vested in the Secretary of the Treasury 
to apply the surplus money in the Treasury to the purchase and re- 
demption of United States bonds. 

Now, what is the existing law ? — and I beg to read it, and at the 
same time I trust that it may appear side by side with the bill itself 
in parallel lines in the Congressional Record. The present law, which 
has stood upon the statute-books for almost seven years, is in these 
words : 

That the Secretary of the Treasury may at any time apply the surplus money 
in the Treasury, not otherwise appropriated, or so much thereof as may be con- 
sidered proper, to the purchase or redemption of United States bonds. 

That is the language of the existing law. The bill proposed by 
the Committee on Ways and Means differs from this law only in 
phraseology, and that difference I will quickly indicate. The bill 
provides — 



2Q4: SPEECHES AND ADDRESSES OF WILLIAM ZvIcKlNLET. 

That the Secretary of the Treasury is hereby authorized to apply the surplus 
money now in the Treasury, and such surplus money as may hereafter be in the 
Treasury, and not otherwise appropriated, or so much thereof as he may consider 
proper, to the purchase or redemption of United States bonds. 

The only difference between the law and the bill is that the law 
declares that the Secretary may at any time, not during the fiscal 
year for which the appropriation was made, upon which the law was 
passed, but may at any time in any year apply any surplus to the pur- 
chase or redemption of United States bonds ; while the bill itself 
chanjres the lanffuasfe by declarine; the Secretary " is hereby author- 
ized to apply the surplus money now in the Treasury, and such 
surplus money as may hereafter be in the Treasury, to the pur- 
chase or redemption of United States bonds." With these excep- 
tions the bill and the law are exactly the same and are almost 
identical in languasre. Xo lawyer would find any difference, no lay- 
man see any distinction, and neither could suggest any reason why, 
with the law unrepealed, any necessity exists for the passage of the 
bill. 

Mr. Chairman, why has not this law been inyoked by the Admin- 
istration and by the Secretary of the Treasury during the past twelye 
months and the country sayed from alarm and apprehension ? Be- 
cause, as the Chairman of the Committee on Ways and Means adyises 
this House, its integrity has been questioned and its yalidity chal- 
lenged. By Ayhom has the integrity of this law been questioned? 
By the President of the United States; and it neyer was questioned 
by any authority, executiye, judicial, or legislatiye, until it was ques- 
tioned by him. 

The Chairman of the Committee on Ways and Means says it was 
neyer operated under by any preyious Secretary of the Treasury. 
That is doubtless true, and the only reason it neyer was used in buy- 
ing bonds by preyious Secretaries and under preyious administra- 
tions was because no condition or emergency existed Ayhich required 
its use. The Secretaries heretofore, with their power under the 
Sinking Fund act and under the act for the redemption of bonds l 
which were subject to payment upon the option of the Goyernment, 
were able to use up the surplus lying in the Treasury, which they did, 
first, by providing for the sinking fund, and, second, by the redemp- 
tion of bonds payable upon the call of the Goyernment. 

Xow, that is the reason why this law was never used by any pre- 
vious Secretary of the Treasury and any previous administration, 
but its force and validity during all previous years were never doubted. 



THE PURCHASE OF GOVERNMENT BONDS. 265 

I say the only gentleman who has ever questioned this law is the 
present President of the United States. To show how it has been 
recognized all along as a wise and salutary measure, which might be 
invoked at any moment by any Secretary of the Treasury to relieve 
the Treasury and return the surplus to the people, I will read from 
Secretary Folger's report of December 3, 1883. In discussing the 
question of using the surplus he said : 

The only authority possessed by the Treasury, whereby it can restore to busi- 
ness the surplus moneys thus accumulated, is that given to the Secretary by the 
act of March 3, 1881— 

The very law we are discussing — 

by which he may at any time apply the surplus money in the Treasury, not other- 
wise appropriated, to the purchase or redemption of United States bonds. 

No doubt or suspicion, it will be observed, is cast upon the law by 
him. There was no emergency for the use of this law during the ad- 
ministration of the Treasury by Secretary Folger. The surplus was 
otherwise absorbed ; but he recognized in this report, to which I have 
called your attention, that he could at any time invoke the law for 
the purpose of paying out the surplus money in the Treasury to the 
holders of Government bonds. 

Mr. Secretary Fairchild recognized this law in his report made to 
Congress last December, in which he says : 

Now, there is no way under existing law to put out again among the people 
the surplus money which comes into the Treasury except it be that of a clause in 
an appropriation act of 1881, authorizing the Secretary of the Treasury to pur- 
chase bonds in the market at such prices and in such amounts as he may think 
best — a power which ought not to be given unnecessarily and a responsibility 
which ought not to be put on any officer of the Government. 

It will be observed that Sir. Fairchild, the present Secretary of the 
Treasury, does not question the validity of the law. The reason he 
gives for not executing the law, for not availing himself of its pro- 
visions, is because it is entirely too much responsibility to put on a 
single officer ; and I may remark, in passing, that the bill reported by 
the Committee on Ways and Means is open to the same objection, 
because there are no restrictions, no qualifications, no guards to the 
action of the Secretary of the Treasury in the use of the surplus for 
the redemption of bonds ; and yet he is now willing to assume this re- 
sponsibility, and wants the bill to pass. We have also the testimony 
of the gentleman who was Secretary of the Treasury at the time this 
law was passed, Mr. Secretary Sherman. This is what he says : 



266 SPEECHES AND ADDRESSES OF WILLIAM McKINLEY. 

This law was passed by a Democratic Congress in both Houses, at my request 
as Secretary of the Treasury, to meet the very difficulty suggested, and, in plain 
English, to operate at any time. 

That is the language of the Secretary of the Treasury who sug- 
gested the passage of that law, who ought to know its purpose. 

Under it the Secretary of the Treasury from time to time could apply the 
surplus in the Treasury to the purchase or redemption of bonds of the United 
States from the beginning of this administration to this hour. Instead of which 
there was an accumulation of surplus beyond all precedent, which tended to and 
did produce the very dangers and difficulties by which we are threatened. 

So I say that the only question yet made to the force and integrity 
of this law is that made by the President of the United States him- 
self. He characterized it in his message as " suspicious " — suspicious 
because, forsooth, it was adopted as an independent section on an ap- 
propriation bill. That is all the ground upon which he bases his sus- 
picion. That is the sole ground upon which he based his refusal to 
execute it, and apply the surplus for the purchase of outstanding 
bonds. 

Mr. Chairman, it may be important to know how this authoriza- 
tion came into an appropriation bill, how this law was passed. I 
have already told you that Senator Sherman, at that time Secretary 
of the Treasury, suggested its enactment. It was offered in the Sen- 
ate of the United States by a member of the President's present oflB- 
cial family, the premier of his Cabinet, Mr. Bayard, at that time a 
Senator from Delaware, and Chairman of the Finance Committee. 
He offered it not covertly, but in open Senate, in broad daylight, and 
called the attention of the Senate to it. 

The Senator from Kentucky [Mr. Beck], who was in charge of 
the appropriation bill, gave way that it might be offered, and it passed 
the Senate without a division and unanimously, and came to this 
House. The House was then Democratic. The House nonconcurred 
in this and other amendments of the Senate. A committee of con- \ 
ference was appointed, consisting on part of the House of two Demo- 
cratic members and one Eepublicau : Mr. McMahon, of Ohio, Mr. 
Cobb, of Indiana, and Mr. Hiscock, of New York. They met, andj 
agreed upon this amendment with the other amendments of the Sen- 
ate, and it came back to the House and passed this body without aj 
dissenting vote. It then received the approval of the President. 
Thus the House will see how it comes to be upon the statute-books. 
It was not a rider, resting for its support upon the bill to which itj 
was attached, but was considered and passed upon its own merits. 



THE PURCHASE OF GOVERNMENT BONDS. 267 

Now, I ask, Is it fair, is it frank, is it just, is it becoming, in any 
officer of the Government to characterize that law as " suspicious," and 
a mere pretense of authority to get rid of the surplus? "Why, Mr. 
Chairman, if the President of the United States feels called upon so 
to characterize every law that has become such through the medium 
of appropriation bills, he must condemn and refuse to execute nearly 
one half of our public laws. Three hundred and eighty-five new 
laws, distinctively new laws, all of a public character, were put upon 
appropriation bills from the year 1862 down to 1874 ; and almost an 
equal number have been put upon appropriation bills since the Demo- 
cratic party have controlled the House of Representatives. Why, the 
great Department of the Treasury, its present management, its pres- 
ent system, was organized upon an appropriation bill. The reorgan- 
ization of the War Department was upon an approj^riation bill ; the 
fixing of the strength of the Navy at 7,500 men was put upon an ap- 
propriation bill ; the fixing of the strength of the Army at 25,000 
men was done through the medium of an appropriation bill, and the 
authority to redeem the fractional currency with fractional coin was 
passed upon an appropriation bill. The authority to issue silver cer- 
tificates in denominations of one, two, and five dollars, the organiza- 
tion of the United States Mints, the extension of benefits of the 
homestead acts, and many of our best reforms and wisest laws, were 
put upon appropriation bills ; and they are just as much oj)en to the 
criticism of the President as being "suspicious" and a nullity as is 
the law about which I am now talking. Why, the very law that gives 
to the President of the United States $50,000 a year salary, instead 
of $25,000, was passed upon an appropriation bill ! 

Mr. E. B. Taylor. Did he take it? 

And there was a great deal of suspicion about its passage. My 
friend asks me if he took it. I have no recollection that any Presi- 
dent has ever refused it — 

Mr. CuTCHEON. Because of its being suspicious. 

On account of a suspicion attaching to it because it was enacted 
as a separate section in an appropriation bill. And I have no doubt 
the present incumbent takes it. But he has just as much justification 
for coming here and asking Congress to re-enact by an independent 
measure the increase of his salary as he has to come and recommend 
the re-enactment of a law that is eight years old, and which stands 
forth without taint or infirmity, valid in law and binding in con- 
science. 

18 



268 SPEECHES AND ADDRESSES OF WILLIAM McKINLEY. 

Now, Mr. Chairman, I might go through the entire list and show 
the vast number of independent measures framed upon appropriation 
bills. There is scarcely an appropriation bill that passes that does 
not contain new legislation in some shape or other. Why, this treat- 
ment of a solemn statute is little short of Executive nullification. 
That is in effect what it amounts to. It is repudiation of a public 
law. Now, what is the meaning of it all ? 

When Congress, on March 4, 1887, adjourned — when the Forty- 
ninth Congress expired by limitation — that Congress had done noth- 
ing by way of reducing taxation or diminishing the inflowing reve- 
nues. Everybody knew that there would be a surplus of revenue 
in the Treasury. Everybody understood it. The President under- 
stood it, and he had the right to convene Congress in extraordinary 
session and put the responsibility of dealing with this surplus upon 
the legislative branch of the Government. But he failed to do it, 
he declined to do it, and he thereby assumed the responsibility, and 
declared his ability to so manage the surplus in the Treasury as to do 
no harm to the country and without disturbance to business interests. 
He did not call the Fiftieth Congress in extraordinary session, and I 
do not wonder, Mr. Chairman, that he did not. M 

If a Democratic House like that of the Forty-ninth Congress, 
which alone could originate revenue bills, with fifty majority, could 
not and would not reduce taxation and revenues, he could have little 
hope that a Congress with little more than a dozen majority would 
reduce taxation and stop the accumulating revenue ; and so I think 
perhaps in this he acted wisely ; but, at all events, in the failure to 
convene Congress in extraordinary session he took upon himself the 
grave responsibility of disposing of that surplus under existing law, 
and for the best interests of the Government and people. 

Does any man within the sound of my voice doubt that he had a 
perfect right, from March 4, 1885— aye, from the date of his inaugu- 
ration down to this very hour — to have applied every dollar of the 
$55,000,000 or 160,000,000 in the Treasury to the purchase of out- 
standing bonds? He had that power fixed by a law passed in a 
constitutional way, which passed by the unanimous vote of both , 
Houses, which stood unassailed and unassailable, and declining to 
avail himself of it he lectures Congress because it did not provide for 
paying out the surplus. i 

When we adjourned we left him full power to pay it out, and I 
wish some friend of the administration would explain why he did not 
do it in the only straightforward, logical and businesslike way — that 



THE PURCHASE OF GOVERNMENT BONDS. 269 

is, by paying the debts of the Government and saving the interest 
charge, which rests so heavily on the people. Instead of doing that, 
the administration prefers another way. It prefers to use the banks 
as a means of putting it in circulation ; and so it says to the banks, 
" If you will get bonds enough and bring them to the Treasury we 
will issue you on the 4-per-cents 110 cents for every dollar deposited, 
and 100 cents on every dollar of 4|^-per-cents you deposit, and thus 
put the money in circulation." And they did it. 

Nearly $59,000,000, as I understand, of the surplus money that 
ought to be in the Treasury to-day, the Secretary having refused to 
pay it out to Government creditors, is now out among the banks, held 
by them, they giving to the Government bonds as security for the 
deposit; and they are getting it without interest. They have the 
surplus money in the Treasury in their own hands, and they collect 
the accruing interest on the Government bonds which they have de- 
posited as security, when, if the administration had used the $59,- 
000,000 and bought a corresponding amount of bonds with that sum, 
those bonds would have been canceled, and the interest on that sum 
would have been stopped. 

And I charge here to-day that the President of the United States 
and his administration are solely responsible for whatever congested 
condition we have in the Treasury and whatever alarm prevails about 
the finances of the country. [Applause.] Every dollar of it would 
have paid a dollar of the Government debts if the Secretary had ex- 
ercised wisely the discretion given him by law. His way might have 
been Justifiable if there had been no other means of putting the 
surplus money in circulation. He may lecture that side of the House 
as much as he will — doubtless they deserve it [laughter] — but he can 
not avoid or evade the responsibility that rests on him. What does 
a man do who has got a surplus balance in the banks and has out- 
standing debts bearing interest ? He calls in the evidences of those 
debts and pays them off with his surplus deposit. That is what a 
business man would have done ; that is what a business administra- 
tion would have done ; and we would have had 150,000,000 less of 
interest-bearing bonds in circulation to-day if the President had fol- 
lowed the way blazed for him by the Republican party. 

Well, now, I wonder, Mr. Chairman, if there was any ulterior 
motive in piling up this surplus? I wonder if it was not for the 
purpose of creating a condition of things in the country which would 
get up a scare and stampede the country against the protective sys- 
tem ? I wonder if this was not just what was in the mind of the 



270 SPEECHES AND ADDRESSES OF WILLIAM McKINLEY. 

President : " I will pile up this money in the Treasury, $65,000,000 
of it, and then I will tell Congress that the country will be filled with 
widespread disaster and financial ruin if it does not reduce the tariff 
duties"? If the President thought that he was going to get up a 
storm of indignation and recruit the free-trade army, break down the 
American system of protection, and put the free traders on top, he 
has probably discovered his blunder by this time ; and the best evi- 
dence of it is that he now wants the very law which he has so long 
discredited solemnly re-enacted, as if it were new and original with 
him ; and, so having failed, he comes here through his Secretary of 
the Treasury — and I hope, Mr. Chairman, that the gentleman from 
Texas will read the letter of the Secretary upon this subject — he 
comes here through his Secretary and asks us to pass this bill, which 
is a duplicate of existing law. 

Why pass it? He has got the authority now, and whatever vote 
we may give, we give with the distinct understanding and the posi- 
tive declaration that an authority just as full and just as ample exists j 
to-day, which the President and Secretary have refused to use, and noj 
higher power will be imparted by this bill when put on the statute- 
books. But I am willing to do anything in an honorable way inj 
aiding the Administration to get out of its dilemma and put in cir- 
culation the $60,000,000 which it has been hoarding, and pay off thatj 
amount of Government debts. [Applause.] 




a^ "^^^-^^^ 



D. APPLE TON 8c C" 



JOHN A. LOGAN. 

Memoeial Address in the House of Eepresentatives, 
Forty-ninth Congress, February 16, 1887. 

[From the Congressional Record.] 

Mr. Speaker : A great citizen who filled high public stations for 
more than a quarter of a century has passed away, and the House of 
Representatives turns aside from its usual public duties that it may 
place in its permanent and official record a tribute to his memory, 
and manifest in some degree its appreciation of his lofty character 
and illustrious services. General Logan was a conspicuous figure in 
war, and scarcely less conspicuous in peace. Whether on the field of 
arms or in the forum where ideas clash. General Logan was ever at 
the front. 

Mr. Speaker, he was a leader of men, having convictions, with the 
courage to utter and enforce them in any place and to defend them 
against any adversary. He was never long in the rear among the 
followers. Starting there, his resolute and resistless spirit soon im- 
pressed itself upon his fellows, and he was quickly advanced to his 
true and rightful rank of leadership. Without the aid of fortune, 
without the aid of influential friends, he won his successive stations 
of honor by the force of his own integrity and industry, his own high 
character and indomitable will. And it may be said of him that he 
justly represents one of the best types of American manhood, and illus- 
trates in his life the outcome and the possibilities of the American 
youth under the generous influences of our free institutions. 

Participating in two wars, the records of both attest his courage 
and devotion, his valor, and his sacrifices for the country which he 
loved so well, and to which he more than once dedicated everything 
he possessed, even life itself. Reared a Democrat, he turned away 
from many of the old party leaders when the trying crisis came 
which was to determine whether the Union was to be saved or to 
be severed. Ho joined his old friend and party leader, Stephen A. 
Douglas, with all the ardor of his strong nature, and the safety and 



272 SPEECHES AND ADDRESSES OP WILLIAM McKINLEY. 

preservation of the Union became the overshadowing and absorbing 
purpose of his life. His creed was his country. Patriotism was the 
sole plank in his platform. Everything must yield to this sentiment ; 
every other consideration was subordinate to it; and so he threw 
the whole force of his great character at the very outset into the 
struggle for National life. To him no sacrifice was too great, no un- 
dertaking too difficult, no charge too desperate, no exposure too 
severe, no siege too hazardous. He commanded, Mr. Speaker, on the 
battle line, and never ordered his men to go where he would not lead. 
His skirmishers were never too close to the enemy's guns to keep 
him away. He was every inch a soldier, dashing and fearless, often 
exposing himself unnecessarily against the earnest protest of his 
commanders and comrades. "Wherever the fire was the hottest, 
wherever the line was most exposed, wherever the danger was most 
imminent, John A. Logan was always to be found. He seemed the 
very incarnation of soldierly valor and vigor. Belmont, Henry, and 
Douelson, Port Gibson, Eaymond, Jackson, Champion Hills and 
Vicksburg, Resaca, Dallas, Kenesaw, and the battle before Atlanta, 
tell the story of his lofty courage, of his martial qualities, of his 
genius to command and of his matchless heroism, as these great bat- 
tles tell to all mankind the dreadful cost of liberty and the price of 
our Nationality. 

Great and commanding, however, Mr. Speaker, as were his serv- 
ices in war, the true eulogist of General Logan can never pass un- 
noticed the important services rendered by him immediately preced- 
ing his enlistment and afterwards in arousing an intense, a deep, a 
profound love for country and a strong and lasting sentiment for the 
cause of the Union, not only in his own State, but in every one of the 
Northern States ; and the full measure and influence of his prompt 
action and courageous stand at that time never can be estimated. 
His patriotic words penetrated the hearts and the homes of the people 
of twenty-two States. They increased enlistment. They swelled the 
muster rolls of the Union. They moved the indifferent to prompt ac- 
tion, they drew the doubting into the ranks of the country's defenders. 

His first election to Congress was in the year made memorable by 
the debate between Lincoln and Douglas. In the Presidential con- 
test of 1860, soon following, he was the enthusiastic friend and sup- 
porter of Douglas. But the moment secession was initiated and the 
Union threatened, he was among the first to tender his sword and 
his services to President Lincoln, and to throw tlie weight of his great 
character and resolute soul on the side represented by the political rival 



JOHN A. LOGAN. 273 

of his old friend. He resigned his seat in Congress to raise a regi- 
ment, and it is a noteworthy fact that in the Congressional district 
which he represented more soldiers were sent to the front according 
to its population than in any other Congressional district in the 
United States. It is a further significant fact, that in 1860, when he 
ran for Congress as a Democratic candidate, in what was known as 
the old Ninth Congressional District, he received a majority of over 
13,000 ; and six years afterward, when at the conclusion of the war 
he ran as a candidate of the Republican party in the State of Illinois 
as Eepresentative to Congress at large, the same old Ninth District, 
that had given him a Democratic majority of 13,000 in 1860, gave 
him a Eepublican majority of over 3,000 in 1866. Whatever else 
these facts may teach, Mr. Speaker, they clearly show one thing — that 
John A. Logan's old constituency approved of his course, was proud 
of his illustrious services, and followed the flag which he bore, which 
was the Flag of the Stars. 

His service in this House and in the Senate, almost uninter- 
ruptedly, since 1867, was marked by great industry, by rugged 
honesty, by devotion to the interests of the country and to the whole 
country, to the rights of the citizen, and especially by a devotion to 
the interests of his late comrades in arms. He was a strong and 
forcible debater. He was a most thorough master of the subjects he 
discussed, and an intense believer in the policy and principles he 
advocated. In popular discussion upon the hustings he had no 
superiors, and but few equals. He seized the hearts and the con- 
sciences of men, and moved great multitudes with that fury of 
enthusiasm with which he had moved his soldiers in the field. 

Mr. Speaker, it is high tribute to any man, it is high tribute to 
John A. Logan, to say that in the House of Representatives Avhere 
sat Thaddeus Stevens, and Robert C. Schenck, James G. Blaine and 
James A. Garfield, Henry Winter Davis and William D. Kelley, he 
stood equal in favor and in power in party control. And it is equally 
high tribute to him to say that in the Senate of the United States, 
where sat Charles Sumner and Oliver P. Morton, Hannibal Hamlin 
and Zachariah Chandler, John Sherman and George F. Edmunds, 
Roscoe Conkling and Justin S. Morrill, he fairly divided with them 
the power and responsibility of Republican leadership. No higher 
eulogy can be given to any man, no more honorable distinction could 
be coveted. 

It has been said here to-day, Mr. Speaker, that John A. Logan 
was a partisan ; that he was a party man. So he was. He believed 



274 SPEECHES AND ADDRESSES OP WILLIAM McKINLEY. 

in the Republican party ; but while he believed in the Republican 
party, its purposes and aspirations, he was no blind follower of party 
caucuses or of partisan administrations. The world knows how 
Logan loved his old commander, General Grant. He loved him 
with a simple faith ; he had been his friend in all his active years ; 
he had presented his name for the first time to the Republican 
National Convention in 1868, as the candidate of the then dominant 
party for the Presidency of the United States, and he had stood by 
him and supported him with his utmost energy in every subsequent 
contest that was made for General Grant for that great office. But, 
loving Grant as he did, he yet had the independence and the courage 
to dissent from his judgment and policy on more than one memorable 
occasion ; and I recall one such occasion now, Mr. Speaker, which can 
not be remembered by any of us without enhancing our admiration 
for the dead Senator. 

It was when the contest between President Grant and Charles 
Sumner was at its height ; it was when the party caucus had decreed 
that the veteran statesman of Massachusetts, the apostle of freedom, 
must be deposed from the Chairmanship of the Committee on Foreign 
Relations of the Senate, a position he had so long filled and with 
such marked distinction, a position for which he was eminently 
qualified by education, ability, and experience. John A. Logan was 
one of four Republican Senators who uttered earnest and emphatic 
protest against that action, and his grand utterances on that occasion 
should be remembered, for they are worthy the hero of a hundred 
battles. Here are his words : 

Twelve years ago, when I came to Congress, I differed with the Senator from 
Massachusetts in my political opinions. I had always recognized him as a man 
of great ability, as a man of sterling integrity and worth. Yet I had no sympathy 
whatever with his political views. But I was attracted toward him in my sym- 
pathies and feelings because of the fact that I stood many times in this Chamber 
and saw him stand like a Roman senator and hurl away the curs of slavery as 
they snapped and snarled at him. I many times saw him disperse them in debate 
on the floor of the Senate. I learned then to admire him, although I did not fully 
agree with him. He then, sir, led the army of liberty in this country. He was its 
leader in the Seuate, its leader everywhere ; as its orator, as its advocate, as the 
man who advanced opinions, as the man who went far in advance and beckoned 
to others to come forward with him and give liberty to all the people of this 
country. During the terrible war through which we have passed he was one of 
the great leaders in the Senate. Through all our trials and difficulties, through 
our misfortunes and our triumphs, he stood at the head of the men in favor of 
liberty in the land. When this administration came into power he still, as the 
great debater, as the great statesman in the land, stood at the head of all. 



LimH 



JOHN A. LOGAN. 275 

So General Logan spoke of Charles Sumner ; and, so feeling, he 
could not consent to witness the humiliation of him who had stood 
on the outpost of liberty and aroused public thought and quickened 
public conscience in favor of freedom for all men. His sense of 
justice was very strong and very deep ; his convictions of fair play 
were of the kind that made him the prompt and ready defender of 
those who were to be dealt with unfairly. He was always an open 
adversary ; he never fought under concealment ; he never fought in 
darkness or in ambush ; he was always direct in his methods, whether 
in war or in peace, and " the path of his thought was straight, like 
that of the swift cannon ball, shattering that it may reach, and shat- 
tering what it reaches." 

Mr. Speaker, he was not only quick to defend Charles Sumner, 
but he was as prompt to defend his old comrade and leader. General 
Grant, when a little later he was unjustly (as Logan believed) at- 
tacked in the Senate, and the warp and the woof of the thought of 
his defense both of Sumner and of Grant are exactly the same. He 
puts the defense of both upon the ground of what they had done for 
their country. In defense of General Grant he opened with this 
simple but pathetic inquiry, " What has the tanner from Galena 
done ? " And then, answering his own question, he said : 

He has written his history in deeds which will live so long as pens are 
dipped in ink, so long as men read, and so long as history is written. The his- 
tory of that man is worth something. It is valuable. It is not a history of glit- 
tering generalities and declamation in speeches, but it is a history of great deeds 
and great things accomplished for this country. 

He reviewed his brilliant achievements at the head of the Western 

Army, and said : 

General Grant was then brought to the Army of the Potomac. He made a 
success, he won the battle, victory perched on our banner, we succeeded, slavery 
. was abolished, and our country saved. 

The man who had done all that, Logan said, was worthy to be 
commended, not condemned. Then he made a most telling appeal to 
his associates, to stand by the great captain who, at the head of a mil- 
lion of men, had made perpetual the best Government in the world. 

Mr. Speaker, General Logan's military career, standing alone, 
would have given him a high place in history and a secure one in the 
hearts of his countrymen. General Logan's legislative career, stand- 
ing alone, would have given him an enduring reputation, associating 
his name with some of the most important legislation of the time and 
the century. But united, they present a combination of forces and of 



270 SPEECHES AND ADDRESSES OF WILLIAM McKIXLEY. 

qualities, they present a success in both careers almost unrivaled in 
the history of men. He lived duriug a period of very great activities 
and forces, and he impressed himself upon his age and time. To me 
the dominant and controlling force in his life was his intense pa- 
triotism. 

It stamped all of his acts and utterances, and was the chief inspira- 
tion of the great work he wrought. His book, recently published, is 
a masterly appeal to the patriotism of the people. His death, so 
sudden and unlocked for, was a shock to his countrymen and caused 
universal sorrow among all classes in every part of the Union. Xo 
class so deeply mourned his taking away as the great volunteer army 
and their surviving families and friends. Thev were closely related 
to him. They regarded him as their never-failing friend. He had 
been the first Commander in Chief of the Grand Army of the Ke- 
public, and to him this mighty soldier organization, numbering more 
than four hundred thousand, was indebted for much of its eliiciency 
in the field of charity. He was the idol of the army in which he 
served — the ideal citizen volunteer of the Eepublic, the pride of all 
the armies, and affectionately beloved by all who loved the Union. 

Honored and respected by his commanders, held in affectionate 
regard by the rank and file, who found in him a heroic leader and 
devoted friend, he advocated the most generous bounties and pen- 
sions, and much of this character of legislation was constructed by 
his hand. So in sympathy was he with the brave men who risked all 
for country that he demanded for them the most generous treatment. 
I heard him declare last summer, to an audience of ten thousand peo- 
ple, gathered from all sections of the country, at the annual encamp- 
ment of the Grand Army of the Eepublic at San Francisco, that he 
believed that the Government should grant from its overflowing 
Treasury and boundless resources a pension to every Union soldier 
who was incapable of taking care of himself, asserting with all the 
fervor of his patriotic soul that the Government was unworthy of 
itself and of the blood and treasure it cost if it would suffer any of 
its defenders to become inmates of the poorhouses of the land, or be 
the objects of private charity. 

Mr. Speaker, the old soldiers will miss him. The old oak around 
which their hearts were entwined, to which their hopes clung, has 
fallen. The old veterans have lost their steady friend. The Congress 
of the United States has lost one of its ablest counselors, the Repub- 
lican party one of its confessed leaders, the country one of its noble 
defenders. 



I 



VIEWS OF THE MINORITY. 

Extracts from the Eeport on "The Mills Tariff Bill," 
IN" THE House of Representatives, Fiftieth Congress, 
April 2, 1888. 

[Fro7n the Congressional Record.'] 

Mr. McKtnley presented the views of the minority of the members of the 
Committee on Ways and Means, as follows : 

The extraordinary mariner in which this bill came to the Commit- 
tee, and the total lack of consideration given to so grave a measure by 
those charged with its investigation, demand notice and comment. 
It was fashioned outside of the Committee and reached it not by the 
reference of the House, which is the usual channel through which 
committees obtain Jurisdiction of a subject. It was presented ready- 
made by the Chairman of the Committee, was framed, completed, and 
printed without the knowledge of the minority, and without consider- 
ation or discussion in the full Committee. If any consultations were 
held the minority were excluded. Thus originating, after three 
months of the session had gone, it was submitted to the Committee. 
Since, there has been no consideration of it. Every effort upon the 
part of the minority to obtain from the majority the facts and in- 
formation upon which they constructed the bill proved unavailing. 
A resolution to refer the bill to the Secretary of the Treasury for a 
statement of its probable effects upon the revenue, together with a 
statistical abstract, which would facilitate its consideration by the 
Committee and the House, was voted down by a strict party vote. 

The industries of the country, located in every section of the 
Union, representing vast interests closely related to the prosperity of 
the country, touching practically every home and fireside in the land, 
which were to be affected by the bill, were denied a hearing ; the 
majority shut the doors of the Committee against all examinations 
of producers, consumers, and experts, whose testimony might have 



278 SPEECHES AND ADDRESSES OF WILLIAM McKINLEY. 

enlightened the Committee. The farmers, whose investments and 
products were to be disastrously dealt Avith, were denied an oppor- 
tunity to address the Committee. The workingmen of the country, 
whose wages were at stake, were denied audience. The Eepresenta- 
tives on the floor of the House were not permitted to voice the wants 
of their constituents. Proposing a grave measure which would af- 
fect all of the people in their employments, their labor, and their 
incomes, the majority persistently refused the people the right of 
hearing and discussion ; denied them the simple privilege of present- 
ing reasons and arguments against their proposed action. 

But as the bill is avowedly a political one, believed to represent, 
so far as it goes, the views of President Cleveland and his party asso- 
ciates, a bill which, with the President's free-trade message of De- 
cember 6, 1887, is to constitute the issue and be the platform of the 
party, these reasons may account for, but will not justify, this extraor- 
dinary course of procedure. The minority protested without avail 
in the Committee, and now announcing it to the House, as they feel 
constrained to do, accept the issue tendered by the bill, accompanied 
with some of their reasons for opposing it, and make their appeal 
from the people's servants to the people themselves. 

The bill is a radical reversal of the tariff policy of the country 
which for the most part has prevailed since the foundation of the 
Government, and under which we have made industrial and agricul- 
tural progress without a parallel in the world's history. If enacted 
into law, it will disturb every branch of business, retard manufactur- 
ing and agricultural prosperity, and seriously impair our industrial 
independence. It undertakes to revise our entire revenue system ; 
substantially all of the tariff schedules are affected ; both classification 
and rates are changed. Specific duties are in many cases changed to 
ad valorem, which all experience has shown is productive of frauds 
and undervaluations. It does not correct the irregularities of the 
present tariff ; it only aggravates them. It introduces uncertainties 
in interpretation, which will embarrass its administration, promote 
contention and litigation, and give to the customs officers a latitude 
of construction which will produce endless controversy and confusion. 
It is marked with a sectionalism which every patriotic citizen must 
deplore. Its construction takes no account of the element of labor 
which enters into production, and in a number of instances makes 
the finished or advanced product free, or dutiable at a less rate than 
the materials from which it is made. " The poor man's blanket," 
which the majority has made a burning issue for so many years, is 



VIEWS OF THE MINORITY. 279 

made to bear tlie same rate of duty as the rich man's. More than 
one third of the free list is made up from the products of the farm, 
the forest, and the mine. From jjroducts which are now dutiable at 
the minimum rates, ranging from seven to twenty-five per cent, and 
even this slight protection, so essential, is to be taken from the farm- 
ers, the lumbermen, and the quarrymen. 

• •••• • ••• 

Nowhere in the bill is the ultimate purpose of its authors more 
manifest than in its treatment of wool. It jjlaces this product upon 
the free list, and exposes our flocks and fleeces to merciless competi- 
tion from abroad. In this respect the bill is but the echo of the Presi- 
dent's message, and gives emphasis to the settled purpose of the 
majority to break down one of the most valuable industries of the 
country. It is public proclamation that the American policy of 
protection, so long adhered to, and under which has been secured 
unprecedented prosperity in every department of human effort, is 
to be abandoned. Why have the majority put wool on the free 
list ? Let them make their own answer. "We quote from their 
report : 

We say to the manufacturer we have put wool on the free list to enable him 
to obtain foreign wools cheaper, make his goods cheaper, and send them into 
foreign markets and successfully compete with the foreign manufacturer. 

First, the purpose is to bring down the price of wool. If this 
should be the result, we inquire at whose expense and loss? It must 
be at the expense of the American grower, and to his loss, who, at 
present prices and with the present duty, is being forced out of the 
business by ruinous foreign competition. The injury, by the confes- 
sion of the majority, will fall upon the American wool grower. He 
is to be the first victim. He can find no profitable foreign market, 
if he is unable to hold his own, and it is absurd to talk about 
enlarging the market for his product at home with the wool of the 
world crowding our shores unchecked by customhouse duties. There 
were 114,000,000 pounds of wool imported into this country during 
the last fiscal year, and our domestic product, as a result, even with a 
duty of ten cents a pound on the higher grades, was diminished to 
205,000,000 pounds. The bill will greatly increase importations of 
the foreign product, and diminish if not wholly destroy our own pro- 
duction. Every nation ought, if possible, to produce its clothing as 
well as its food. This Nation can do both, if the majority will let it 
alone. It should be borne in mind that our wool producers can not 
compete with countries where no winter feeding and but little summer 



280 SPEECHES AND ADDRESSES OF WILLIAM McKINLEY. 

attention is required and where labor is so cheap, unless their indus- 
try has just and adequate protection. Is labor in manufacturing 
more deserving of the considerate concern of Congress than labor 
engaged in the field of agriculture? Both are useful and equally 
honorable, and alike merit the thoughtful consideration of those 
charged with making laws. 

The majority report asserts that we must produce our woolen 
goods at lower cost and be able to undersell the foreign product. 
And after this how is the lower cost to be secured ? First by fleecing 
the wool grower, and next by reducing the labor cost in the manu- 
facture. How are we to undersell the foreign product? By making 
the manufacturing cost of our goods less than theirs. In other words, 
by cutting down the wages of our skilled and unskilled labor, not to 
the foreign standard simjoly, but below it, for the product must cost 
us less if we undersell our competitors. The American farmer will 
not quietly submit to this injustice. The American workingman will 
indignantly repel this effort to degrade his labor. 

The majority gravely inquire in their rejjort, " If Congress grants 
the request of the wool growers, what are the people to do for woolen 
clothing ? " "We beg to suggest that the people of this country wore 
woolen clothing during the existence of the tariff of 1867, and the 
tariff proposed by the Wool Conference is substantially that tariff, 
and the people were never better clothed, and never better able to buy 
clothes. It would be instructive to the majority to compare the prices 
of woolen clothing in this country during the period from 1847 to 
1860 under the low tariff then prevailing, with the prices now pre- 
vailing ; and they would be profited also by a comparison of the prices 
of wages then prevailing with those now maintained. Their investi- 
gations would disclose the wretched condition of labor in the former 
period, the starving prices then received, and the inability of thou- 
sands of worthy workmen to get work at any price. Clothes at any 
price were then the dearest. If the laboring men could have been 
heard by the Committee, they would have told a story of misery dur- 
ing the free-trade era which might have deterred the majority even 
from inaugurating the policy now proposed. 

Again, the majority inquire, " Are the people to be compelled by 
Congress to wear cotton goods in the winter, or go without, to give 
bounties to wool growers and wool manufacturers?" While this 
question is too trifling for a serious reply, we assure the majority that 
the only danger of such an occurrence is from the bill they now report 
— a bill which is to deprive our people of employment, and the oppor- 



VIEWS OF THE MINORITY. 281 

tunity to earn money with which to feed and clothe themselves and 
their families and educate their children. 

The foreign market to which the American producer is invited by 
the majority report is delusory. Our own market is the best. There 
is no market anywhere comparable with it. Let us first of all possess 
it ; it is ours, and we should enjoy it. Practically all the nations of 
the world, except England and the countries she has subjugated, have 
protective tariffs which they are maintaining, while the majority in 
the House is seeking to overthrow ours, under the delusion of a for- 
eign market. They gravely invite us to leave our natural markets — 
the best in the world — and go in search of others less inviting. The 
Commercial Bulletin, of Boston, on January 14, 1888, stated the true 
situation : 

In brief, with the removal of all duties on wool, ... we should not gain 
a cent's worth of foreign trade, for the other woolen-using countries, France, 
England, and Germany, could still undersell us in foreign markets with the help 
of their cheap labor. We should lose the fine wool industry, which would be 
transferred to South America and Australia, and we should also lose cheap 
mutton. 

It is more than idle to talk about a foreign market for wool and 
woolen products while we are buying of other countries and imjjort- 
ing annually forty million dollars worth of worsted and woolen goods. 
We should make these goods here ; and if we did, there would be a 
steady demand for our domestic wool at remunerative prices, our 
labor would be profitably employed, and the woolen factories would 
be running at their highest capacity with reasonable rewards for their 
investments. 

Mr. James Phillips, Jr., of Massachusetts, a large woolen manu- 
facturer, who is strongly opposed to free wool, speaking of the for- 
eign market, says, and we commend his words : 

The world's market is a great free-trade shadow dance. The more people 
think and know of this question the less attractive the world's markets be- 
come, and the more substantial our home market grows. My advice would be 
that the United States look carefully after the home pasture by tightening the 
fence, if necessary, before we go wandering around to find a spot where we can 
sell our goods in competition with the labor of Europe. 

Wool on the " free list " is a deadly assault upon a great agricul- 
tural interest, and will fall with terrible severity upon a million peo- 
ple, their households, and dependencies. It will destroy invested 
capital, unsettle established values, wrest from the flockmasters their 
lifetime earnings, bankrupt thousands of our best and most indus- 



282 SPEECHES AND ADDRESSES OP WILLIAM McKINLEY. 

trious farmers, and drive tliem into other branches of agriculture 
already overcrowded. It is a vicious and indefensible blow at the 
entire agricultural interests of the countr3^ 

Under this bill, wool being free and a duty of forty per cent placed 
on woolen cloth and " all manufactures of wool," we beg to inquire 
how combed and carded wool are to be classified ? If they are held 
to be " manufactures of wool," then the duty of forty per cent would 
be assessed and collected and they would pay the same duty as if 
manufactured into cloth. If they are to be classified as wool, the 
effect would be to stop the sorting, scouring, and combing of wool al- 
most entirely in the United States, unless the domestic wools could be 
bought at a price low enough to cover the cost of the labor required 
for placing wool in the advanced form. Admitting combed and 
carded wool as wool free of duty would render the combing, scour- 
ing, and carding machinery in this country to a great extent idle and 
worthless. There will be no use for it if this work could be done 
more cheaply on the other side. Surely the duty ought to be suffi- 
ciently high to cover the cost of the labor, and unless it is, for- 
eigners will be given control of the wool market not only in its raw 
state, but when carded, combed, and washed. 

Again, ready-made clothing and cloakings are made subject to a 
duty of forty-five per cent ad valorem. Clothing and cloakings are 
composed, first, of cloth, and second, of the lining, braid, buttons, 
and sewing silk, which are called trimmings. In the better grades of 
these manufactures silk is used entirely as a lining and is growing in 
general use. We are informed that where silk is used these trim- 
mings in a man's coat and vest nearly equal one half of the cost of the 
material used in such garments. Now, then, if the cloth pays a duty 
of forty per cent and the trimmings a duty of fifty per cent, as pro- 
vided by the bill, then the average would be forty-five per cent. Now, 
forty-five per cent is the duty placed by the bill on ready-made 
clothing, so that the cloth and the trimmings when made into a coat 
and vest pay the same duty as the materials. The clothier, the tailor, 
^: the sewing woman, have no protection for their labor. If the bill was 
enacted into law, the whole ready-made clothing business of the 
country would be transferred to our European rivals. Then what 
market would we have for our cloth ? 

Placing borax on the free list will destroy an important industry 
on the Pacific coast. It was greatly stimulated by the increased 
tariff given it by the law of 1883, since which the production has in- 



Q 



VIEWS OF THE MINORITY. 2S 

creased from 5,600,000 pounds in 1883 to 10,182,000 pounds in 1887, 
and during that period the prices have ruled lower in the United 
States than at any other period of production. In 1873 the price 
was thirty-three cents. It is now six and one half cents — all due to 
American production under the encouragement of a protective tariff. 
This is to be withdrawn, and our markets again placed in the control 
of the foreigner. 

Tin plates are placed on the free list, although this country can 
make this essential article as easily as Great Britain, from which our 
supply is almost entirely obtained. Tin plates are composed of 
ninety-five to ninety-seven and one half per cent of iron or steel and 
two and one-half to five per cent of tin. This country has every 
facility for producing the sheets of iron or steel for tin plates, and it 
can buy from other countries the tin with which these sheets are 
coated. It is a mistaken belief that Great Britain obtains her supply 
of tin principally from Cornwall, in England. That country imports 
from other countries the larger part of her supply of tin, and this 
country now buys tin from the same countries, but not for use in the 
manufacture of tin plates, the present duty of one cent per pound be- 
ing too low to enable us to compete with the tin-plate manufacturers 
of Great Britain. The world's supplies of tin are derived principally 
from Banca and Billiton, two Dutch islands in the Straits of Malacca, 
from Australia, and from Cornwall in England. In the five years 
ended May 31, 1885, the Straits and Australia supplied 156,832 tons 
of tin, and in the five years ended December 31, 1883, Cornwall 
supplied 45,672 tons. Since 1883 the imports of tin from the Straits 
into Great Britain have greatly increased, while the supply from 
Cornwall has only slightly increased, if at all. In the fiscal year 
ended June 30, 1887, this country imported tin plates valued abroad 
at $16,883,813. The bill of the majority not only proposes to con- 
tinue this large importation annually, but makes public proclama- 
tion that this country does not want a tin-plate industry. If the 
majority had considered the interests of our own country, and not 
those of Great Britain, they would have recommended an increase in 
the existing duty on tin plates, so that our people M^ould have been 
encouraged to engage in their manufacture and to develop the re- 
cently discovered tin mines of Dakota. 

Free tin plates (or iron or steel sheets, or plates, or taggers iron, 
coated with tin or lead, or with a mixture of which these metals is a 
component part, etc.) means no less than the annihilation of the 
19 



284 SPEECHES AND ADDRESSES OP WILLIAM McKINLEY. 

manufacturing of the finer grades of sheet iron in this country, upon 
which is expended the greatest amount of skilled and best paid labor. 
The galvanized sheet-iron industry is especially threatened, and this 
is a great and growing manufacture, involving heavily invested capi- 
tal in many States, East and West. Free tin plates do not necessarily 
insure cheaper prices to the farmer or general consumer, but the duty 
taken off will be gladly absorbed by the foreign manufacturer, and 
this condition can be fully appreciated if the public will note that 
" free pig tin " has not insured against a most unheard-of heavy ad- 
vance in price of this article in the hands of a foreign " combine," say 
from about twenty cents per pound to as much as thirty-eight cents 
per pound, within the last few months, and is now quoted on differ- 
ent futures as varying from thirty-four to thirty-seven cents per 
pound, being seventy-five or eighty per cent advance. This article 
is so completely controlled by the French syndicate that the boast 
of the trust is that this great advance can be maintained at its 
will. This condition fixes also the advanced prices on all the good 
solder which so largely enters into the working of tin plate in " the 
farmer's cans," etc., and for which " tariff taxation " (so called) is not 
chargeable. And here let attention be called to the fact that good 
tin plates (well coated with tin) have of late advanced very consider- 
ably to consumers, for which advance the control by the foreign trust 
is wholly responsible ; and it is further and well understood, in well- 
informed and reasoning mercantile and manufacturing circles, that 
tin plates would lately have advanced more largely, without regard for 
our American manufacturers', or consumers', or packers', or farmers' 
interests, except that the foreign syndicate has supplied the tin-plate 
manufacturers of England at a much less price than to the outside 
world for the time being, so that " tin plates " need not just now be 
advanced to a point which might threaten and retard the effort to 
place such plates upon the free list, as proposed by this bill. 

The sheet-iron and sheet-steel industries are placed in great peril 
by this bill. Cotton ties fare as badly as tin plates ; they also are 
transferred to the free list. AVe now make cotton ties in this country 
in small quantities, and would make them in larger quantities if the 
duty on foreign cotton ties were higher than it now is. In the expan- 
sion of the cotton-tie industry in our own country the South ought to 
largely share, for it possesses all the raw materials of their manufacture, 
and the market for their sale and use is at its own door. But the bill 
of the majority announces that the manufacture of cotton ties is not 
to be tolerated in the North, or established in the South, and that such 



VIEWS OF THE MINORITY. 285 

machinery as we now possess for the manufacture of coition ties is to 
be thrown upon the scrap pile. British manufacturers are invited to 
make all our cotton ties, and of course they will then charge us what 
they please for them. Why this article when used for baling cotton 
should be admitted free of duty, and when used for any other pur- 
pose should be made dutiable at one and a quarter cents a pound, is 
not manifest upon any principle of fair play or ecoiiomic science. 
There may be some reason known to the majority which they have 
failed to disclose to the minority ; we know of no reason why cotton 
should enjoy this extraordinary and exceptional legislative favor. 

If it be the purpose of the majority to reduce the income of the 
Government from customs sources, we beg to remind them that that 
purpose will not be accomplished by the scaling down of duties, as 
proposed in this bill. It is well known, and supported by almost 
universal experience, that a mere diminution of duties tends to 
stimulate foreign importations and thereby increase the revenue. 
This is shown by the reports of importations since 1883 of those 
articles upon which reductions were made by the law of that year. 
For example : The duty oh window glass by the tarilf of 1883 was 
reduced twenty-five per cent, and the importations increased from 
50,947,890 pounds under the old law to 61,627,948 pounds in 1887 
under the new law, and produced to the Treasury an increased reve- 
nue in the latter year over the former of more than 1300,000. The 
duty on braid, plaits, laces, and trimmings was reduced by the act 
of 1883 from thirty to twenty per cent ad valorem, and the sum 
paid in duties in 1887 was 1114,482.76 more than in 1883. The re- 
duction on tin plate under the act of 1883 was one tenth of a cent 
per pound, while the duty collected in 1887 was $715,468.57 greater 
than in 1883. Bronze in powder was reduced by the law of 1883 
from twenty to fifteen per cent, yet the sum received by the Govern- 
ment for duty in 1887 was $14,000 more than was received from the 
same source in 1883. The duty on writing paper was reduced from 
thirty-five per cent to twenty-five per cent ad valorem. The receipts 
in 1883 under the higher duty Avere $19,406.87; under the reduced 
duty in 1887 the receipts were $242,216.27, showing an excess of 
duties of $222,000. The duty on wool was reduced by the act of 
1883, and the increase of importations and revenue is probably the 
most striking of any in the schedule. The importations in 1882 
were 63,016,769 pounds ; in 1887, 114,404,174. The duty collected in 
1882 was $3,854,653.18 ; that in 1887, $5,899,816.63. These illustra- 



2S6 SPEECHES AND ADDRESSES OF WILLIAM McKINLEY. 

tions clearly demonstrate that a simple scaling down of duties from 
twenty to thirty or forty per cent, more or less, will only increase 
revenues and therefore augment the surplus. 

If " the absolute peril " to the business of the country, described 
by the President in his message last December as resulting from an 
existing and increasing surj^lus, was imminent and well founded, how 
easily he could have averted it by the purchase of outstanding bonds 
with the surplus money in the Treasury — a power which he possessed, 
clear and undoubted, under the act of March 3, 1881. To have thus 
used the surplus in the Treasury would have been direct and busi- 
nesslike ; just what a prudent business man would have done with 
his idle money — called in his creditors and applied it to his debts. 
The President failed to do this, and wlien Congress assembled " the 
condition " confronted it. If the House had even then appreciated 
the situation, how promptly and easily it could have, in part at least, 
relieved it ! It could have been done in the first week of December, 
by abolishing the entire tobacco tax, amounting to $30,000,000 annu- 
ally, and thereby removed a great burden from the agricultural pro- 
ducers of the countr}^ by releasing also from taxation alcohol used 
in the arts and manufactures, which it is estimated would amount to 
$6,000,000 more. This simple proposition would have received a 
practically unanimous vote in the House and the approval of the 
country, and have stopped the collection of $3,000,000 a month ; and 
if it had been promptly done there would now be $12,000,000 less of 
surplus in the Treasury, and we venture to predict that the reduction 
that could have been thus secured was greater than the reduction which 
will be accomplished by this bill. The majority failed to seize the op- 
portunity. It seems impossible for the party now in the majority in 
this House to pass a revenue bill and reduce taxation. This has been 
its almost unvarying experience while in control of the House. 

It is a striking fact that all of the reductions of taxation which 
have occurred since the conclusion of the war, with the exception of 
the trifling ones made by the acts of March 1, 1879, and of May 28, 
1880, aggregating a little over $6,000,000, were accomplished while 
the Republican party was in the majority and in control of legisla- 
tion. A brief summary of what has been done in this regard will be 
both suggestive and instructive. By the act of July 14, 1870, the 
reduction of the revenue from customs duties was : 

Free list $3,403,000 

Estimated reduction from the dutiable list 23,651,748 

Total $26,054,748 



VIEWS OP THE MINORITY. 287 

By the act of Mciy 1, 1872, tea and coffee were placed 
upon the free list, making a reduction of $15,893,847 

By the act of June 6, 1872, tariff duties were further reduced, aud 

the reduction was, by the — 

Free list $3,345,734 

Estimated reduction from the dutiable list 11,933,191 

Total $15,278,915 

By the act of March 3, 1883, the reduction from tariff duties was : 

Free list $1,365,999 

Estimated reduction from the dutiable list 19,489,800 

Total $20,855,799 

The foregoing estimates were made when the several bills were 
passed. Of internal taxes the following have been the reductions 
made by the Republican party since the conclusion of the war : 

By the acts of July 13, 1866, and March 2, 1867 $103,381,199 

By the acts of March 31, 1868, and February 3, 1868.. . 54,802,578 

By the act of July 14, 1870 55,315,321 

By the act of December 21, 1871 14,436,862 

By the act of June 6, 1872 15,807,618 

By the act of March 3, 1883 40,677,682 

Total $284,421,260 

This wo present as the result of Republican legislation from July 
13, 18G6, down to and including March 3, 1883. The Republican 
party was in control of the House of Representatives from the first- 
named date to March 4, 1875. During that period it will be observed 
that taxation was reduced and revenue diminished in the aggregate 
sum of $284,421,260. On March 4, 1875, the control of the House 
passed to the Democratic party and remained with it until March 4. 
1881, a period of six years. During these years the internal revenue 
was reduced $6,308,935. On March 4, 1881, the Repitblican party was 
reinvested with control of the House of Representatives, holding it for 
two years, during which time it reduced taxation aud the revenues from 
customs sources in the estimated sum, $20,855,799, and upon internal 
revenue, $40,677,682, a grand total of 161,432,481. 

Since March 4, 1883, the House of Representatives has been domi- 
nated by the Democratic party, a period of five years, and no taxes 
have been reduced and no curtailment of the revenues has taken place, 
although warned of a threatened surplus not only by the present ad- 
ministration but by the preceding one of President Arthur. It will 
be observed tliat from 1866 to 1888, a period of twenty-two years, 



288 SPEECHES AND ADDRESSES OF WILLIAM McKINLEY. 

the control of the House of Eepresentatives has been equally divided 
between the two political parties, each having governed eleven years. 

During the eleven years of Republican control the 

revenues were reduced $302,504,569 

During the eleven years of Democratic control the 
revenues were reduced 6,368,935 

Difference in favor of the Republican party $356,135,634 

If it be claimed that for the most part during the Democratic con- 
trol of the House the Senate was dominated by the Republican party, 
and therefore the responsibility of failure to reduce the revenues 
should be alike shared by them, we answer : That under the Constitu- 
tion of the United States the House alone can originate bills to re- 
duce taxation, the Senate having no jurisdiction of the subject until 
it is given to it by a bill which passes the House ; that during all 
these years no such bill has gone from the House to the Senate ; and 
that therefore the sole responsibility for failure rests with the present 
majority in the House of Representatives. 

If disaster results from the failure of the President to use the sur- 
plus now in the Treasury, as the law authorizes him to use it, in pay- 
ment of our existing debts, and if the majority in the House, which 
alone can originate a bill to reduce the revenue, fails to send to the 
Senate a bill of that character, the responsibility will rest with them. 
The minority are powerless ; they are neither in control of the House 
nor the committees ; they are in no parliamentary position to report 
a bill or give direction to legislation which shall surely accomplish 
results so much desired. They sought by amendments in the Com- 
mittee on Ways and Means to make this bill reasonable, just, and 
practical ; failing there, they will seek to amend and modify it in tlie 
Committee of the Whole House, and if their efforts there are unavail- 
ing, they will seek as a last resort an opportunity to offer a substitute, 
which will assuredly diminish the revenues without any impairment 
of the American system of protection. It is therefore manifest that 
the responsibility for the present monetary condition which so alarms 
the country does not rest with the minority party in the House, but 
with the President and the majority in Congress. They can not 
escape it. The President has for three years failed, while having the 
power, to avoid the financial condition he now complains of. The 
majority in the House for six years has signally failed to provide for 
a reduction of the revenue. They can not avoid resjionsibility for 
the evils which are now upon us ; and while these are beyond their 
power to retrieve, they can, by courage and wisdom, and governed 



VIEWS OP THE iMINORITY. 289 

by business principles, provide against lil^e evils in the future. They 
must now act, or make public confession of failure. 

The minority regard this bill not as a revenue-reduction measure, 
but as a direct attempt to fasten upon this country the British policy 
of free foreign trade. So viewing it, their sense of obligation to the 
people, and especially the working people, employed in manufacturing 
and agriculture, in all sections of our common country, impel them 
to resist it with all their power. They will assist the majority in 
every effort to reduce the redundant income of the Government in 
a direct and practicable way; but every effort at fiscal legislation 
which will destroy or enfeeble our industries, retard material develop- 
ment, or tend to reduce our labor to the standard of other countries, 
will be met with the persistent and determined opposition of the 
minority, as represented in this House. 



THE MILLS TAEIFF BILL. 

Speech in the House of Eepreseis^tatives, Fiftieth 
Congress, May 18, 1888. 

[From the Congressional Record.l 

The House being in Committee of the Whole, and having under consideration 
the bill (H. R. 9,051) to reduce taxation and simplify the laws in relation to the 
collection of the revenue, Mr. McKinley said — 

Mr. Chairman : Our country is in an anomalous situation. 
There is nothing resembling it anywhere else in the world. \Vhile 
we are seeking to find objects to exempt from taxation, in order that 
we may relieve an overflowing Treasury, other nations are engaged in 
exploring the field of human production to find new objects of taxa- 
tion to supply their insufficient revenues. In considering the situa- 
tion that thus confronts us and the bill that is presented here as 
intended to relieve it, we may as well understand at the beginning 
the things upon which all are agreed. 

They are, first, that we are collecting more money than is required 
for the current needs of the Government ; and second, that the 
excess, whatever it may be, beyond the wants of the Government 
should be left with the people. Our contention, therefore, is upon 
the manner of the reduction, and not upon the reduction itself ; not 
that no reduction shall or ought to be made, but how and upon what 
principle can it best be accomplished. We agree, further, that the 
tax upon tobacco shall be removed, and thus leave with the people 
$30,000,000, which they annually pay upon this domestic product. 
Were we men of business, governed by the principles which guide 
practical men of affairs, this burden would have been and could have 
been removed any time within the past two years ; and had it been 
removed two years ago no surplus would now vex the Administration 
or alarm the business of the country. In passing, it is suitable that 
I should say that within the period named no hindrance from this 
side of the House has been interposed to the abolition of this tax. 



THE MILLS TARIFF BILL, 291 

It is also suitable that I should say, for the sake of the truth of 
history, that gentlemen on this side and gentlemen on the other side 
of the House repeatedly made efforts during the last Congress to 
secure recognition for the purpose of offering a bill to abolish this 
tax, which request was refused by the presiding officer of the House, 
and refused, too, Mr. Chairman, when every intelligent Representa- 
tive on this floor knew that if an opportunity were given to vote 
upon a bill for the abolition of that tax it would receive not simply a 
majority, but the vote of fully two thirds of the House. I repeat, 
that if that had been done, if the House as then organized had given 
to the representatives of the people an opportunity to vote upon a 
simple proposition to reduce taxation, no immediate surplus would 
now be in the Treasury to interrupt and disturb the business of the 
country, [Applause on the Republican side.] But this tax was not 
abolished, and if it is now, that still leaves about $40,000,000 revenue 
collected in excess of the public necessity. How can this amount 
be remitted with the least disturbance to the business and employ- 
ments of the people ? 

This, Mr, Chairman, is the real, the practical question. At this 
point parties and individuals differ, and herein the two lines of 
political thought which have prevailed from the formation of the 
Government are clearly manifested, and present for consideration 
and the ultimate judgment of the people the division between the 
Republican and Democratic parties upon a purely economic question. 
I can not forbear, in this connection, to congratulate the country 
that upon this question our fellow-citizens of all sections and all 
nationalities, without regard to past party affiliations, unbiased by 
prejudice and uninfluenced by passion, can divide. Here is pre- 
sented an issue which leaves the past behind and looks only to the 
present and the future ; an issue without a tinge or touch of section- 
alism, which awakens none of the bitter memories of former discord 
or divisions, which appeals neither to race nor geographical lines, 
which knows no North, or South, or East, or West, but brings all 
within its sweep and contemplation, each dividing upon what each 
may honestly regard for the best interests and highest welfare of all ; 
an issue which we can consider and discuss calmly and deliberately, 
having only in view the future of the individual citizen and the 
highest and best destiny of the Republic. In this spirit I welcome 
the issue so sharply, and I may say boldly, made by the President in 
his annual message, and now further made by the bill under debate, 
and approach its consideration with the single purpose to reach, if 



292 SPEECHES AND ADDRESSES OF WILLIAM McKlNLEY. 

possible, a conclusion whicli shall bring to the country, and the whole 
country, with whose interests we are temporarily intrusted, the widest 
benefits and the most lasting good, [Applause.] It will be freely 
confessed by our political opponents that this bill is but the beginning 
of the tariff policy outlined by the President, and is a partial response 
only to his message, to be followed with additional legislation until 
our system of taxation shall be brought back to the ancient land- 
marks of the Democratic party, to a purely revenue basis — that is, 
that the tariff or duty put upon foreign importations shall here- 
after look to revenue, and revenue only, and discard all other consid- 
erations. 

This brings us face to face, therefore, with the two opposing sys- 
tems — that of a revenue as distinguished from a protective tariff — and 
upon their respective merits they must stand or fall. Now, what are 
they ? First, what is a revenue tariff ? Upon what principle does it 
rest ? It is a tariff or tax placed upon such articles of foreign pro- 
duction imported here as will produce the largest revenue with the 
smallest tax ; or, as Robert J. Walker, late Secretary of the Treasury 
and author of the tariff of 1846, from whom the advocates of the 
pending measure draw their inspiration, put it : 

The only true maxim is that which experience demonstrates will bring in 
each case the largest revenue at the lowest rate of duty, and that no duty be 
imposed upon any article above the lowest rate which will yield the largest 
amount of revenue. The revenue [said Mr. Walker] from ad valorem duties last 
year [1845] exceeded that realized from specific duties, although the average of 
the ad valorem duties was only 23.57 per cent and the average of the specific 
duties 41.30 per cent, presenting another strong proof that the lower duties 
increase the revenue. 

To secure larger revenue from lower duties necessitates largely 
increased importations ; and if these compete with domestic products 
the latter must be diminished or find other and distant, and, I may 
say, impossible markets, or get out of the way altogether. A genuine 
revenue tariff imposes no tax upon foreign importations the like of 
which are produced at home, or, if produced at home, in quantities 
not capable of supplying the home consumption, in which case it may 
be truthfully said the tax is added to the foreign cost and is paid by 
the consumer. A revenue tariff seeks out those articles which domes- 
tic production can not supply, or only inadequately supply, and which 
the wants of our people demand, and imposes the duty upon them, and 
permits as far as possible the competing foreign product to be im- 
ported free of duty. This principle is made conspicuous in the bill 



THE MILLS TARIFF BILL. 293 

under consideration ; for exau.ple, wool, a competing foreign product, 
which our own flockmasters can supply for domestic wants, is put 
upon the free list, while sugar, with a home product of only one 
eleventh of the home consumption, is left dutiable. 

Any tax levied upon a foreign product which is a necessity to our 
people, and which we can not fully supply, will produce revenue in 
amount only measured by our necessities and ability to buy. In a 
word, foreign productions not competing with home productions are 
the proper subjects for taxation under a revenue tariff ; and in case 
these do not furnish the requisite revenue, a low duty is put upon the 
foreign product competing with the domestic one — low enough to 
encourage and stimulate importations, and low enough to break down 
eventually domestic competition. For example, the duty proposed 
under this bill upon cotton bagging will extinguish the industry here, 
and under its provisions we would import all of that product from 
Calcutta and Dundee. A large revenue would come from this source, 
because the foreign would take the place of the domestic production. 
This duty is a revenue one, and gives no protection whatever to the 
home producer. If it did it would not be a revenue tariff. As the Cob- 
den school of political science puts it, " The moment it is made clear 
that a tax is a benefit to home producers, then the free-trade dogma 
condemns it. The test is simple and easy of application. Free trade 
or a revenue tariff does not allow of any import duties being imposed 
on such articles as are likewise produced at home." Or, if produced 
at home, a revenue tariff would soon destroy their production. 

What is a protective tariff ? It is a tariff upon foreign imports so 
adjusted as to secure the necessary revenue, and judiciously imposed 
upon those foreign products the like of which are produced at home 
or the like of which we are capable of producing at home. [Ap- 
plause.] It imposes the duty upon the competing foreign product ; 
it makes it bear the burden or duty, and, as far as possible, luxuries 
only excepted, permits the noncompeting foreign product to come 
in free of duty. Articles of common use, comfort, and necessity, 
which we can not produce here, it sends to the people untaxed and 
free from customhouse exactions. [Apj^lause.] Tea, coffee, spices, 
and drugs are such articles, and under our system are upon the free 
list. It sa3's to our foreign competitor. If you want to bring your mer- 
chandise here, your farm products here, your coal and iron ore, your 
wool, your salt, your pottery, your glass, your cottons and woolens, 
and sell alongside of our producers in our markets, we will make 
your product bear a duty ; in effect, pay for the privilege of doing it. 



294 SPEECHES AND ADDRESSES OP WJLLIAM McKlNLEY. 

[Applause on the Republican side.] Our kind of tariff makes the 
competing foreign article carry the burden, draw the load, suj^ply the 
revenue ; and in performing this essential office it encourages at the 
same time our own industries and protects our own people in their 
chosen employments. [Applause.] That is the mission and purpose 
of a protective tariff. That is what we mean to maintain, and any 
measure which will destroy it we shall firmly resist ; and if beaten on 
this floor, we will appeal from your decision to the people, before 
whom parties and policies must at last be tried. [Applause.] We 
have free trade among ourselves throughout thirty-eight States and 
the Territories and among sixty millions of peo2:)le. Absolute free- 
dom of exchange within our own borders and among our own citi- 
zens is the law of the Republic. Reasonable taxation and restraint 
upon those without is the dictate of enlightened patriotism and the 
doctrine of the Republican party. [Applause on the Rejaublican 
side.] 

Free trade in the United States is founded upon a community of 
equalities and reciprocities. It is like the unrestrained freedom and 
reciprocal relations and obligations of a family. Here we are one 
country, one language, one allegiance, one standard of citizenship, 
I one flag, one Constitution, one Nation, one destiny. It is otherwise 
\ with foreign nations, each a separate organism, a distinct and inde- 
pendent political society organized for its own, to protect its own, and 
work out its own destiny. "We deny to those foreign nations free 
trade with us upon equal terms with our own producers. [Applause.] 
The foreign producer has no right or claim to equality with our own. 
lie is not amenable to our laws. There are resting upon him none 
of the obligations of citizenship. He pays no taxes. He performs no 
civil duties ; he is subject to no demands for military service. He is 
exempt from State, county, and municipal obligations. He contrib- 
utes nothing to the support, the progress, and glory of the Nation. 
Why should he enjoy unrestrained equal privileges and profits in 
our markets with our producers, our labor, and our taxpayers ? Let 
the gentleman who follows me answer. [Applause.] We put a 
burden upon his productions, we discriminate against his merchan- 
dise, because he is alien to us and our interests, and we do it to 
protect our own, defend our own, preserve our own, who are always 
with us in adversity and prosperity, in sympathy and purpose, and, 
if necessary, in sacrifice. [Applause.] That is the principle which 
governs us. I submit it is a patriotic and righteous one. In our 
own country, each citizen competes with the other in free and 



THE MILLS TARIFF BILL. 295 

nnresentful rivalry, while with the rest of the world all are united 
and together in resisting outside competition as we would foreign 
interference. 

Free foreign trade admits the foreigner to equal privileges with 
our own citizens. It invites the product of foreign cheap labor to 
this market in competition with the domestic product, representing 
higher and better paid labor. It results in giving our money, our 
manufactures, and our markets to other nations, to the injury of our 
labor, our tradespeople, and our farmers. Protection keeps money, 
markets, and manufactures at home for the benefit of our own people. 
[Applause on the Republican side.] It is scarcely worth while to 
more than state the proposition that taxation upon a foreign com- 
peting product is more easily paid and less burdensome than taxa- 
tion upon the noncompeting product. In the latter it is always 
added to the foreign cost, and therefore paid by the consumer, 
while in the former, where the duty is upon the competing product, 
it is largely paid in the form of diminished profits to the foreign 
producer. [Applause.] It would be burdensome beyond endurance 
to collect our taxes from the products, professions, and labor of our 
own people. 

Now, Mr. Chairman, this is a bill ostensibly to reduce the rev- 
enue. It will not do it. Take from this bill its internal-revenue 
features, its reduction of $24,500,000 from tobacco and from sjjecial 
licenses to dealers in spirits and tobacco, eliminate these from the 
bill, and you will not secure a dollar of reduction to the Treasury un- 
der its operation. Your $27,000,000 of proposed reduction by the 
free list will be more than offset by the increased revenues which shall 
come from your lower duties ; and I venture the prediction here to- 
day, that if this bill shall become a law, at the end of the fiscal year 
1889 the dutiable list under it will carry more money into the Treas- 
ury than is carried into the Treasury under the present law, because 
with every reduction of duties upon foreign imports you stimulate 
and increase foreign importations ; and to the extent that you in- 
crease foreign importations, to that extent you increase the reve- 
nue. There is another singular thing about this bill, and I have 
nowhere seen attention called to it. Now I do not intend to ex- 
amine the bill item by item. But there are a few striking things 
in the bill which the country ought to understand. No one would 
have supposed from hearing this discussion but that the bill reduced 
duties all along the line. You never would have suspected, had you 
listened to the gentleman from Texas [Mr. Mills], or the gentleman 



296 SPEECHES AND ADDRESSES OP WILLIAM McKINLEY. 

from Pennsylvania [Mr. Scott], or the gentleman from Indiana [Mr. 
Bynum], or other gentlemen of the Ways and Means Committee, 
that this bill increased duties, would you ? How many men on the 
other side of the House know what is in this bill to-day? I would 
like to poll them. [Laughter.] 

Xow here is a single item — steel billets. The present duty on steel 
billets is 45 per cent ad valorem. In this bill it is increased to 811 
per ton, which is equivalent to 68.33 per cent — an advance of 45 per 
cent. Do you know what is made out of these steel billets? Wire 
fencing, which incloses the great fields of the West; and the raw ma- 
terial is increased 45 per cent by this bill ; and if the principle of the 
gentlemen who advocate the bill be true, that the duty is added to 
the cost, every pound of wire fencing that goes to the West will be 
increased from one quarter to one half a cent a pound ; all this under 
a Democratic bill. What else is made out of steel billets? Nails, 
which everybody use, which enter into the every-day uses of the peo- 
ple. The duty upon nails is reduced 25 per cent, and the raw ma- 
terial is increased 45 per cent. [Laughter.] As a friend near me 
suggests, when one end goes up the other goes down ; and the latter, 
I trust, will be the fate of this bill. [Laughter.] 

Why, sir, the duty on wire fencing is only 45 per cent ad valorem ; 
yet the billet from which wire fencing is made must pay by this bill 
63 per cent. Here [illustrating] is a piece of wire rod drawn from 
these steel billets which finally goes into fencing. That is dutiable at 
45 per cent under this bill ; and the steel from which it is made is 
dutiable at 63 per cent. What do you think of " raw material " for 
manufacturers? [Laughter.] No account is here taken of the labor 
required to draw the rods. But, Mr. Chairman, that is not all that 
is remarkable about this bill, this great bill which is based upon prin- 
ciple, it is said, which the President stands behind and beneath, and 
which he insists shall be passed, whether or no, in this House, and 
for the passage of which he is dispensing official favors ; for, as the 
Post, of this city, says, " there is an Allentown for every Sowden." 
[Laughter and applause.] 

What else? Here, for example, are cotton ties, which present 
another queer freak in this bill. Everybody knows what cotton ties 
are ; they are hoop-iron cut into lengths just large enough to go round 
a bale of cotton. Now, if the Southern cotton planter wants some of 
this hoop-iron with which to bale his cotton he goes to the custom- 
house at New York or Charleston and cuts off all he wants, and he 
does not have to pay a cent of duty ; but if the farmer-constituent of 



THE MILLS TARIFF BILL. 297 

my friend who sits before me [Mr. Nelson], or your farmer-constitu- 
ent, wants some hoop-iron of precisely the same width and thickness 
and goes to the customhouse to get it, the Government makes him 
pay one cent and a half of duty upon every pound he takes, while it 
lets the cotton planter take his for nothing. If the Western farmer 
wants it for his bucket or his barrel or to go on his wagon-bed, or if 
the washerwoman wants it for her washtub, every one of them' must 
pay a cent and a half a pound, under the philosophvof the gentleman 
who framed this bill, while the cotton planter gets "'his absolutely free 
of duty. Gentlemen, is that fair? I appeal to Southern men who 
sit before me ; I appeal to Northern Democrats who sit around me ; 
is that fair upon any principle of justice or fair play? Talk about 
sectionalism ! You raise the question in your bill ; vou make a sec- 
tional issue which I deeply regret, and I am sure you must, upon seri- 
ous reflection. 

There are some other features in this bill which are a little singu- 
lar. The proposed duty on white lead is two cents a pound, while 
orange mineral, which is made from white lead, is reduced to one 
cent and a half a pound. [Laughter.] That is another case of 
high duty upon raw material and low duty upon the finished 
product. 

Why, what in the world, Mr. Chairman, has this bill done for the 
people anyhow? What has it done for the farmer? It has taken the 
duty practically off of everything he grows. I will not stop to give 
the items. It makes free practically every product of the farm, the 
forest, and mine. It takes the duty off of wool. What does it give 
the grower in return ? Does it give him anything free ? Everything 
he buys is dutiable. The coat he wears, the hat that covers his head, 
his shoes, his stockings, his sugar, his rice, everything bears a duty' 
and substantially everything he raises is put on the free list. The 
duty on wool must go. What has this Democratic party given the 
agriculturists in return for this slaughter of their interests? I have 
looked this bill up and down, and I will tell yon what they have 
done for the farmer. They have given him free sheep-dip. [Lauo-h- 
ter and applause.] Sheep-dip is made free, the duty on it abolisired. 
My distinguished friend from Virginia [Mr. Lee], who honors me 
with his presence here, knows what this article is. It is a preparation 
which IS used on sheep. It is made up largely of the stems of to- 
bacco. It has a little sulphur in it, I believe ; it has also a little 
iime m it. They put that on the free list, and that is all they do for 
the farmer. [Laughter.] 



298 SPEECHES AND ADDRESSES OP WILLIAM McKINLEY. 

Mr. Hopkins, of Illinois. What good is that to the farmer after they have 
destroyed his flocks ? 

None. They leave the shears he clips his wool with at 45 per cent 
ad valorem. They make his wool free, and then make the farmer pay 
45 per cent for the shears with which he clips his wool. [Laughter.] 
But that is not all. The bell, the sheep bell— if my friend from 
Massachusetts [Mr. Eussell] is here, if that golden-shod shepherd 
from Worcester is here [laughter and applause], he will understand. 
It is the bell that is put around the neck of the sheep to admonish 
the shepherd of the whereabouts of the wandering flock under his 
charge. I am told that gentleman has gone on the outside. I learn 
he is now here in his seat ; I am glad to see him. lie knows what I 
am talking about. [Laughter.] They have left them dutiable at 45 
per cent ad valorem. Why, even the sheep will be ashamed of you 
gentlemen. [Laughter.] 

Tin plates are made free. What are tin plates made of ? Ninety- 
seven and a half per cent are sheet iron or sheet steel ; two and a half 
per cent tin. Tin plates are made free. Sheet iron, sheet steel are 
dutiable at two cents a pound. Now, I shall not tax you further 
with the details of the bill. I might spend hours in pointing out 
like inconsistencies. I will leave their further discussion for the five- 
minute debate. I only give these samples so that my honorable and 
learned friend from Kentucky [Mr. Breckinridge], who replies to me, 
may take them up and explain the principle on which these rates 
are fixed and these duties levied. 

Mr. Chairman, there is another thing which I wish to call atten- 
tion to in this bill, and that is the internal-revenue part of it. It 
seems to have escaped attention. Now, so far as the abolition of the 
tax on tobacco is concerned we are all in accord ; but this new fea- 
ture of the bill provides for the repeal of the law which authorizes 
the destruction of illicit stills when found in unlawful use. Under 
the present law, if you find a man engaged in unlawful distilling, not 
having paid the tax or secured the license, the officer is authorized to 
destroy the whole outfit. The bill repeals that section of the law, and 
provides that the still shall neither be mutilated nor destroyed, but 
preserved, presumably for future violations of the law. [Laughter 
and applause.] And in this bill further provision is made that in 
case a man is arrested for illicit distilling, the judge is charged espe- 
cially with the duty of looking well to his comfort and to his well- 
being while he is in the custody of the officials of the law. [Laugh- 
ter on the Republican side.] That provision does not apply to any 



THE MILLS TARIFF BILL. 299 

other class of criminals under any of our statutes ; but if a man is en- 
gaged in violating the revenue laws he must be tenderly looked after 
by the judge, who is directed to see that he is in every way made com- 
fortable while serving out his sentence in prison. [Renewed laughter 
on the Eepublican side.] 

Now, Mr. Chairman, there is one leading feature of this bill, 
which is not by any means the most objectionable feature, but which, 
if it stood alone, ought to defeat this entire measure, and that is the 
introduction of the ad valorem system of assessments to take the 
place of the specific system now generally in force. You all know 
the difference between the ad valorem system and the specific mode 
of levying duties. One is based upon value, the other upon quantity. 
One is based upon the foreign value, difficult of ascertainment, rest- 
ing in the judgment of experts, all the time offering a bribe to under- 
valuation ; the other rests upon quantity, fixed and well known the 
world over, always determinable and always uniform. The one is 
assessed by the yardstick, the ton, and the pound-weight of com- 
merce, and the other is assessed by the foreign value, fixed by the 
foreign importer or his agent in New York or elsewhere, fixed by 
the producer, fixed by anybody at any price to escape the payment of 
full duties. Why, valuation under the ad valorem system is not even 
uniform throughout the United States. My friend from Massachu- 
setts [Mr. Morse], who listens to me now, knows that the valua- 
tions fixed upon imported goods at the port of Boston are often differ- 
ent from the valuations fixed on the same class of goods, costing the 
same, arriving in New York, Philadelphia, San Francisco, or Charles- 
ton. So we do not have and can not have a uniform value, for the 
value is subject always to the cupidity or dishonesty of the foreign 
importer or producer. It is a system, sir, that has been condemned 
by all the leading nations of the world. There is not a leading 
nation that adheres to any considerable extent to the ad valorem rates 
of duty upon articles imported into its borders. England has aban- 
doned all ad valorem duties except one, for the very reason that 
there can be no honest administration of the revenue laws so long as 
the value is fixed thousands of miles away from the point of produc- 
tion and impossible of verification at home. Henry Clay said, fifty 
years ago : " Let me fix the value of the foreign merchandise, and I 
do not care what your duty is." 

Mr. Secretary Manning, in his very able report made to the last 
Congress, went over the entire question, and published in a vol- 
ume the opinions of the experts of the Treasury, the collectors, 
20 



300 SPEECHES AND ADDRESSES OF WILLIAM McKINLEY. 

the naval officers, the special agents of the Department, all of ■whom 
declared that there is nothing left for the American Government to 
do but to abolish the ad valorem system and adopt the specific in the 
interest of the honest collection of the revenue and for the safety and 
security of reputable merchants. And the Secretary himself said, in 
language too strong and plain to be misunderstood, that it is the duty 
of Congress to abandon the ad valorem and establish specific duties. 
I give below these opinions. 

Naval Officer Burt, of New York, says : 

I have long been convinced that a change from ad valorem to specific rates 
would not only be a benefit to the revenues, but would go far to relieve their ad- 
ministration from the friction and inevitable injustice that have made it in a 
measure odious. 1 might give here a resume of my reasons for this opinion, as 
frequently expressed oflBcially hitherto, but I presume the Department is fully 
apprised of all the arguments adduced on either side. I will therefore simply 
say that the ad valorem system is theoretically the perfect system, and that this 
has engaged its support by those who have only had opportunity to view it as an 
abstract proposition. This prejudice in its favor must surely give way before the 
overwhelming evidence that in practice, particularly with high rates, it breeds 
injustice, contention, and commercial obstructions that are almost intolerable. 

James D. Power, a special agent of the Treasury, in a report to the 
same Secretary, says : 

Ad valorem rates of duty afford temptations and opportunities for fraud 
which can not be guarded against even by the most rigid rules and vigilant 
watchfulness. The assessment of values under this system is based upon expert 
knowledge of values, the most uncertain and arbitrary method that could be de- 
vised. Under the ad valorem system fraud has prospered, and demoralized the 
importing trade, which has passed from the hands of American citizens into the 
control of men who have taken advantage of our high import duties to enrich 
themselves at the expense of the revenue and the ruined trade of American whole- 
sale firms. Fraud of this nature is difficult to detect, and more difficult still to 
establish. In the absence of documentary proof it resolves itself into a mere 
difference of opinion between experts, and the owner of the suspected goods can 
at all times procure experts who will maintain the correctness of his invoice 
prices ; or he may select an easier and more convincing and efficacious line of de- 
fense by procuring affidavits from his buyer or partner abroad to the effect that 
the invoice cost was the actual price paid for the goods. 

Messrs. L. G. Martin and A. K. Tingle, special agents, make the 
following statement to the Secretary : 

There can be no doubt that a change from ad valorem to specific rates would 
help to diminish the tendency to corrupt action and loss to the revenue by the 
incompetency or indifference of appraisers. The application of specific rates to 
all textile fabrics would undoubtedly be a work of great difficulty, particularly 
as to woolen goods, but it is believed that a schedule can be prepared by the 



THE MILLS TARIFF BILL. 301 

skilled oflBcers in the appraiser's department, with the aid of manufacturers and 
merchants, which would be satisfactory to all interested, except those who are 
profiting by the present system of undervaluation. 

The late Secretary Manning summed up the objections to ad valo- 
rem rates, and I beg to quote his language. He clearly exposed the vice 
of the system which this bill seeks to ingraft upon our legislation : 

Whatever successful contrivances are in operation to-day to evade the revenue 
by false invoices, or by undervaluations, or by any other means, under an ad va- 
lorem system, will not cease even if the ad valorem rates shall have been largely 
reduced. They are incontestably, they are even notoriously inherent in that sys- 
tem. One advantage, and perhaps the chief advantage, of a specific over an ad 
valorem system is in the fact that, under the former, duties are levied by a positive 
test, which can be applied by our officers while the merchandise is in possession 
of the Government, and according to a standard which is altogether National and 
domestic. That would be partially true of an ad valorem system levied upon 
" home value " ; but there are constitutional impediments in the way of such a 
system which appear to be insuperable. But under an ad valorem system, the 
facts to which the ad valorem rate is to be applied must be gathered in places 
many thousand miles away, and under circumstances most unfavorable to the 
administration of justice. 

This one feature of the bill ought to be enough to insure its 
defeat, and if the party associates of the late Secretary had given 
heed to his sound utterances this vicious mode of assessment would 
have no place in the bill. Instead of simplifying the collection of the 
revenues as the title of the bill declares, it will increase the difficul- 
ties now experienced, encourage fraudulent invoices, promote under- 
valuation, impair the revenue, and do incalculable injury to honest 
importers and merchants. 

I now come to consider the general effect of the protective system 
upon our people and their employments. There is no conflict of 
interests and should be none between the several classes of producers 
and the consumers in the United States. Their interests are one, 
interrelated and interdependent. That which benefits one benefits 
all ; one man's work has relation to every other man's work in the 
same community ; each is an essential part of the grand result to be 
attained, and that statesmanship which would seek to array the one 
against the other for any purpose is narrow, unworthy, and unpatri- 
otic. The President's message is unhappily in that direction. The 
discussion had on this floor has taken that turn. Both have been 
calculated to create antagonisms where none existed. The farmer, 
the manufacturer, the laborer, the tradesman, the producer and 
the consumer all have a common interest in the maintenance of a 
protective tariff. All are ^alike and equally favored by the system 



302 SPEECHES AND ADDRESSES OP WILLIAM McKlNLEY. 

which you seek to overthrow. It is a National system, broad and 
universal in its application ; if otherwise, it should be abandoned. 
It can not be invoked for one section or one interest to the exclusion 
of others. It must be general in its application within the contem- 
plation of the principle upon which the system is founded. We have 
been living under it for twenty-seven continuous years, and it can be 
asserted with confidence that no country in the world has achieved 
such industrial advancement, and such marvelous progress in art, 
science, and civilization as ours. Tested by its results, it has surpassed 
all other revenue systems. 

From 1789 to 1888, a period of ninety-nine years, there have been 
forty-seven years when a Democratic revenue-tariff policy has pre- 
vailed, and fifty- two years iinder the protective policy, and it is a 
noteworthy fact that the most progressive and prosjoerous periods of 
our history in every department of human effort and material devel- 
opment were during the fifty-two years when the protective party was 
in control and protective tariffs were maintained ; and the most dis- 
astrous years — years of want and wretchedness, ruin and retrogression, 
eventuating in insufficient revenues and shattered credits, individual 
and National — were during the free-trade or revenue-tariff eras of our 
history. No man lives who passed through any of the latter periods 
but would dread their return, and would flee from them as he would 
escape from fire and pestilence ; and I believe the party which pro- 
motes their return will merit and receive popular condemnation. 
What is the trouble with our present condition ? No country can 
point to greater prosperity or more enduring evidences of substantial 
progress among all the people. Too much money is being collected, 
it is said. We say. Stop it ; not by indiscriminate and vicious legisla- 
tion, but by simple business methods. Do it on simple, practical lines, 
and we will help you. Buy up the bonds, objectionable as it may be, 
and pay the Nation's debt, if you can not reduce taxation. You could 
have done this long ago. Nobody is chargeable for the failure and 
delay but your own administration. 

Who is objecting to our protective system ? From what quarter 
does the complaint come? Not from the enterprising American 
citizen ; not from the manufacturer ; not from the laborer, whose 
wages it improves ; not from the consumer, for he is fully satisfied, 
because under it he buys a cheaper and a better product than he did 
under the other system ; not from the farmer, for he finds among the 
employes of the protected industries his best and most reliable cus- 
tomers ; not from the merchant or the tradesman, for every hive of 



THE MILLS TARIFF BILL. 303 

industry increases the number of his customers and enlarges the 
vokime of his trade. Few, indeed, have been the petitions presented 
to this House asking for any reduction of duties upon imports. None, 
that I have seen or heard of, and I have watched with the deepest 
interest the number and character of these j^etitions that I might 
gather from them the drift of public sentiment. I say 1 have seen 
none asking for the passage of this bill, or for any such departure 
from the fiscal policy of the Government so long recognized and fol- 
lowed, while against this legislation there has been no limit to peti- 
tions, memorials, prayers, and protests, from producer and consumer 
alike. This measure is not called for by the people ; it is not an 
American measure ; it is inspired by importers and foreign producers, 
most of them aliens, who want to diminish our trade and increase 
their own ; who want to decrease our prosperity and augment theirs, 
and who have no interest in this country except what they can make 
out of it. To this is added the influence of the professors in some of 
our institutions of learning, who teach the science contained in books, 
and not that of practical business. I would rather have my political 
economy founded upon the every-day experience of the puddler or the 
potter than the learning of the professor, or the farmer and factory 
hand than the college faculty. Then there is another class who want 
protective tariffs overthrown. They are the men of independent 
wealth, with settled and steady incomes, who want everything cheap 
but currency ; the value of everything clipped but coin — cheap labor 
but dear money. These are the elements which are arrayed against us. 

Men whose capital is invested in productive enterprises, who take 
the risks of business, men who expend their capital and energy in the 
development of our resources, are in favor of the maintenance of 
the protective system. The farmer, the rice grower, the miner, the 
vast army of wage-earners from one end of the country to the other, 
the chief producers of wealth, men whose capital is their brain and 
muscle, who aspire to better their condition and elevate themselves 
and their fellows ; the young man whose future is yet before him, and 
which he must carve out with his hand and head, who is without the 
aid of fortune or of along ancestral line — these are our steadfast allies 
in this great contest for the preservation of the American system. 
Experience and results in our own country are our best advisers, and 
they vindicate beyond the possibility of dispute the worth and wisdom 
of the system. 

What country can show such a trade as ours, such commerce, such 
immense transportation lines, such a volume of exchanges, and such 



304 SPEECHES AND ADDRESSES OP WILLIAM McKINLEY. 

marvelous production from the raw material to the finished product? 
Its balance-sheet is without a parallel in the world's history — richest 
in agriculture, greatest in its domestic trade and traffic, and leading 
in manufactures any nation in Europe. Why abandon a policy which 
can point to such achievements, and whose trophies are to be seen on 
every hand ? The internal commerce of the United States is greater 
than the entire foreign commerce of Great Britain, France, Germany, 
Eussia, Holland, Belgium, and Austria-Hungary, Why, a single rail- 
road system in this country (that of the Pennsylvania Kailroad Com- 
pany) carries more tonnage and traffic in a single year than all the 
merchant ships of Great Britain ! The whole of Europe has not built 
as many miles of railroad as this country has during some recent 
years, and in 1880 the whole known world did not lay as many miles 
of track as were laid across this country. Great Britain's foreign 
commerce equals about one sixth of our domestic commerce. Can we 
do better under any other fiscal policy ? We say not. Wise states- 
manship commands us, therefore, to let well enough alone. 

Sir Edward Sullivan, in a recent article in the London Post, 
makes these suggestive comparisons, which I beg every gentleman 
to hear : 

Under free trade the masses must get poorer, because they get less employ- 
ment. A well-known statistical work gives a comparison of the material progress 
of France under protection and England under free trade. If there is any truth 
in figures, it ought to startle us from our free-trade dream. 

The comparison is based on the returns of legacy duty : 

In 1826 England was 10s. a head richer than France. 

In 1850 England was 19s. a head richer than France. 

In 1877 England was 5s. a head poorer than France. 

France has fifty-seven per cent of her land under tillage, and it is increasing 
every year. The United Kingdom has thirty per cent of her land under tillage, 
and it is diminishing every year, but the population of England increases much 
more rapidly than the population of France. 

The commerce of England has increased twenty-one per cent in ten years. 
The commerce of Prance has increased thirty-nine per cent in ten years. The 
commerce of the United States has increased sixty-eight per cent in ten years. 
The commerce of the world has increased twenty-six per cent in ten years. 

So much for the blasting eflEects of free trade. 

In Germany, so long ago as May 14, 1882, Bismarck, in a speech 
before the German Reichstag, paid to the Republican protective tariff 
policy this high eulogy. He said : 

The success of the United States in material development is the most illus- 
trious of modern time. The American Nation has not only successfully borne 
and suppressed the most gigantic and expensive war of all history, but immediate- 



THE MILLS TARIFF BILL. 



305 



ly afterward disbanded its Army, found employment for all its soldiers and ma- 
rines, paid off most of its debt, given labor and homes to all the unemployed of 
Europe as fast as they could arrive within its territory, and still by a system of 
taxation so indirect as not to be perceived, much less felt. Because it is my de- 
liberate judgment that the prosperity of America is mainly due to its system of 
protective laws, I urge that Germany has now reached that point where it is 
necessary to imitate the tariff system of the United States. 

You may try protection by any test you will. You may try it not 
only by the condition of the individual citizen and his happiness and 
prosperity and the aggregate prosperity of the Nation, but try it by 
the progress which has been made in invention and scientific develop- 
ment ; try it by any standard you may raise, the protective system 
shows by its results that it surpasses any other. You can match it 
with no other. 

Go to the Patent Office and examine the evidences furnished from 
that great register of the products of American genius. Take the 
States which have stood by the protective system, which have believed 
in it, which have built up under it, and contrast them with the States 
whose Representatives have stood in unyielding opposition to the sys- 
tem on this floor. See what result you get. Take Connecticut, a 
little State but a manufacturing one : in the year 1887 there were 
788 patents granted to the inhabitants of that State, one for every 
790 of its inhabitants, while for Arkansas the number of patents 

[From the Commissioner's report, 1887. "] 



States. 


Patents. 


One to every 
inhabitant. 


Connecticut 


788 
65 

1,875 

1,595 
245 
130 
988 
112 

4,047 
45 

1,477 
6G 

2,109 
53 
324 
131 
112 
183 
505 
265 


790 


Arkansas 


12,346 


Massachusetts 


950 


Illinois 


1,929 


Kentucky 


6,729 


Georafia 


11,862 


New Jersey 


1,144 


Louisiana 


8,392 


New York 


1,255 


Mississippi 


25,146 


Ohio 


2,165 


North Carolina 


31,208 


Pennsylvania 


2,030 


South Carolina 


;9,145 


Rhode Island 


1,234 


Tennessee 


12,746 


Vermont 


2,966 


Virginia 


11,458 


California 


1,712 


Texas 


6,006 







306 SPEECHES AND ADDRESSES OP WILLIAM McKINLEY. 

granted was 65, one to every 12,346. Take Massachnsetts : in 1887 
there were 1,875 patents granted to the people of that State, one to 
every 950 of her population ; while to Kentucky there were 245 pat- 
ents granted, or one to every 6,729 of her population. Take Illinois : 
1,595 patents were granted to her people, or one to every 1,929 of her 
population ; while for Georgia there were 130, or one in every 11,862 
of her population. Here is the list (see page 305). 

These figures need no comment ; they point their own moral ; 
they enforce their own lesson. They demonstrate better than any 
argument that I can make that iavention and progress and the gen- 
eral diffusion of knowledge follow manufacturing and industrial en- 
terprises. [Applause.] 

"Why, Mr. Chairman, the establishment of a furnace or factory or 
mill in any neighborhood has the effect at once to enhance the value 
of all property and all values for miles surrounding it. Manufactures 
produce increased activity. The farmer has a better and a nearer 
market for his products. The merchant, the butcher, the grocer, have 
an increased trade. The carpenter is in greater demand ; he is called 
upon to build more houses. Every branch of trade, every avenue of 
labor, will feel almost immediately the energizing influence of a new 
industry. The truck farm is in demand ; the perishable products, 
the fruits, the vegetables, which in many cases will not bear exporta- 
tion, and for which a foreign market is too distant to be available, find 
a constant and ready demand at good paying prices. 

"What the agriculturist of this country wants more than anything 
else, after he has gathered his crop, are consumers — consumers at home, 
men who do not produce what they eat, but must purchase all they 
consume ; men who are engaged in manufacturing, in mining, in 
cotton spinning, in the potteries, and in the thousands of produc- 
tive industries which command all their time and energy, and whose 
employments do not admit of their producing their own food. The 
American agriculturist further wants these consumers near and con- 
venient to his field of supply. Cheap as inland transportation is, 
every mile saved is money made. Every manufacturing establish- 
ment in the United States, wherever situated, is of priceless value 
to the farmers of the country. The six manufacturing States of 
New England aptly illustrate the great value of a home market to 
the "Western farmer. These States have reached the highest perfec- 
tion in skill and manufactures. They do not raise from their own 
soil, with the exception of hay and potatoes, but a small fraction of 
what their inhabitants require and consume ; they could not from 



THE MILLS TARIFF BILL. 307 

their own fields and granaries feed the population which they had in 
1830, much less their present population. The most intense revenue 
reformer, the most unenlightened Democrat, will have to confess that 
New England is indebted in large part for her splendid development 
to the protective system. Now, have her prosperity and progress 
been secured at the sacrifice of other interests and other sections? 
I answer, No ; but they have brought, as I believe I shall be able to 
show, a positive blessing to all our 60,000,000 people. 

In 1880 the population of these six States was over 4,000,000. 
The food products required by their people, the very necessities of 
their daily life, in a large measure came from other States and remote 
sections of the Union. They raised, in 1880, but one quarter of one 
per cent of the total wheat production of the United States. They 
raised in the same year but one half of one per cent of the total crop 
of Indian corn, two and one quarter per cent of the oats, twelve per 
cent of the hay, and thirteen per cent of the potatoes which were pro- 
duced in the United States. What did they consume? What did 
they buy of the Western farmer ? Fifty millions of dollars' worth of 
meat were consumed by their industrial peojjle in a single year. The 
extent of their needs is strikingly shown by the fact (obtained from 
the report of Commissioner Fink) that during the year 1884 "the 
trunk lines " brought into New England no less than 470,000 tons of 
flour and 950,000 tons of grain. At 200 pounds to the barrel of flour, 
this is an importation of 4,700,000 barrels, or nearly one and one fifth 
barrels, for each inhabitant. During the same year there were ex- 
ported from Boston and Portland, the only points in New England 
from which breadstuffs are sent abroad, 2,100,000 barrels of flour, 
leaving for consumption within these States 2,600,000 barrels. These 
figures take no account of the large trade by water from New York. 
A large part of the flour consumed in Connecticut, Ehode Island, and 
southern Massachusetts is received in this way, but no reliable statis- 
tics are available. It is reasonable, however, to sui^pose — and this 
comes to me from what I deem good authority — that the amount 
thus received and consumed oifsets a large portion of the foreign ex- 
ports to which I have referred. Of the grain received during the 
same year rather less than 400,000 tons were exj^orted, leaving for 
New England consumption 550,000 tons, for all of which these States 
were the customers of the West in addition to the amount grown 
upon their own soil. In addition to this, New England consumed in 
1886-87, in her factories, nearly one fourth of the entire cotton crop 
of the country. More than this, she used in her woolen mills, in 1880, 



308 SPEECHES AND ADDRESSES OF WILLIAM McKINLEY. 

fully one half of the entire wool clip of the United States ; and dur- 
ing the year 1886 she consumed more than one sixth of the entire an- 
thracite coal production of the country, and five and a half per cent of 
the bituminous coal production, and every pound of both came from 
the Middle and Southern States. 

Is not New England — I appeal to the gentlemen of the other side, 
I appeal to the farmers of the country — worth preserving ? Is not the 
industrial system which makes such a community of consumers for 
agricultural products possible worth maintaining? Does not she fur- 
nish you a market worth fostering ? Does not she give you a trade and 
an exchange of products worth your while to guard with the most con- 
siderate care ? And does not her condition indicate the wisdom of the 
policy we advocate ? Is not her market better for you than a foreign 
one ? Is not New England a better customer for you, more reliable, 
more easily reached, more stable, than Old England ? [Apjilause on 
the Eepublican side.] Is not Boston a better consumer for the 
people of the United States than London, New York than Liverpool, 
Pittsburg than Manchester, Cincinnati than Birmingham? [Ap- 
plause on the Republican side.] 

New England buys of you for all her wants ; Old England takes 
not a pound or a bushel from you except what she must have and can 
not get elsewhere. Let us contrast this home market of New England 
with the foreign market of Old England. In 1880 New England con- 
sumed 540,000,000 pounds of cotton, at 11.61 cents a pound, which 
in value then amounted to $62,694,000, or twenty per cent more 
than the per capita value of all our domestic exports to the United 
Kingdom; and this was only New England's contribution to the! 
Southern producers of cotton. She sends at least $70,000,000 to the 
West and Northwest for her food supplies. She sends to the wool 
growers of the Middle, Western, and Pacific States $40,000,000 an- 
nually for their fleeces. I repeat, is not this market worth pre- 
serving, aye, cherishing, and does it not make us long to have New 
England thrift, New England enterprise, and New England politics 
more generally distributed throughout all sections of the country? 
[Applause on the Eepublican side.] 

You can destroy this valuable home market by such legislation as 
is proposed in this bill ; you can diminish this demand for food, for 
cotton, for wool, for flax and hemp produced in other sections of the 
country, by following the delusive theories of our friends on the other 
side of the House ; you can diminish the capacity of the operatives to 
buy of you by diminisliing their wages ; you can drive them from the 



THE MILLS TARIFF BILL. 309 

cotton and woolen factories to the farms ; they will then drift to the 
West and Northwest, not to engage in manufactures, but in a great 
measure to become tillers of the soil, and instead of being as they are 
now, and as they will be under a proper tariff system, your con- 
sumers, they become your competitors. They go from the ranks of 
consumers to the ranks of producers ; diminish the consumers and 
increase the producers. The foreign markets for agricultural prod- 
ucts is one of the delusions of free trade. If it ever had any real 
substance as against a good home market, that has long since disap- 
peared. The Chairman of the Ways and Means Committee says to the 
Western farmer : " Let New England go. Pass her by, and go to Old 
England." Well, that is about as practical as the Democratic party 
ordinarily is. [Laughter on the Re^Kiblican side.] 

Why, it was only a Avhile ago that I remember to have heard 
the gentleman from Arkansas [Mr. Dunn], a prominent member of 
this House and Chairman of one of its leading committees, say what 
I now read from the Record : 

The wheat producer of the Northwest is standing face to face with the wheat 
producer of India. A few years ago India shipped 40.000 bushels of wheat. Last 
year (1885) she put into the market 40,000,000 bushels. Can you protect the 
Northwest farmer against that labor ? India can put wheat down in the markets 
of consumption in Europe cheaper than we can transport it from the fields of pro- 
duction to the markets of consumption — that is to say, India can produce and 
market her wheat in Europe for what it costs the farmer of the Northwest to 
transport his to the market of consumption, without allowing him for the cost of 
production. In other words, the transportation of wheat costs the American 
farmer as much as both transportation and production costs the India farmer. 

In the face of a statement like this, from such high Democratic 
authority, how, I ask, is the wheat of the American farmer to reach 
the European market with any profit to our producers ? And yet it 
is to this kind of competition that the Chairman of the Ways and 
Means Committee invites the American farmer. Do the farmers want 
such a market with such a competition? What their answer will be 
no man can doubt. They will reject with indignation and scorn the 
Chairman's invitation. [Applause.] The home market is the best, 
besides being the safest. It has the most money to spend, and spends 
the most. It consumes the most, it is therefore the most profitable. 
The masses of our people live jbetter than any other people in the 
world. Great Britain only buys our food products when she has not 
enough of her own and can reach no other supply. This market, 
therefore, is fitful and fluctuating, and can not be relied upon as we 
can rely upon our own consumers. The foreign market under a 



310 SPEECHES AND ADDRESSES OP WILLIAM McKINLEY. 

revenue tariff for agricultural products has not been encouraging in 
our own experience in the past. It promises less under such a system 
in the future. 

The Chairman of the Committee in opening this debate boldly 
announced that we must increase foreign importations to secure 
National prosperity. How much does the gentleman and the party 
with which he is associated desire to increase importations? Are 
they not large enough already? Are they not now crowding our 
producers and diminishing our annual productions? Are they not 
already making labor restless, filling it with apprehension and uncer- 
tainty as to the future ? Is this country to be the dumping ground 
of foreign products? During the last fiscal year over 1233,000,000 in 
value of foreign merchandise was imported into the United States free 
of duty, and over $450,000,000 additional was imported which paid a 
duty. Is this not enough? Do the iron and steel workers want 
further importations in their line, representing cheap labor, to com- 
pete with the product of their labor ? Over 850,000,000 in iron and 
steel manufactures were imported last year, every dollar of which 
represented foreign capital and foreign labor, which might well have 
been produced at home. Every ton could have been made here, and 
American hands were waiting to make it. 

How much labor do you suppose was represented by the $50,000,- 
000 worth of iron and steel that came into this country last year ? It 
would have taken 1,740 puddlers and helpers, working every day for 
300 days in the year, to have produced the scrap iron that came from 
Europe last year. It would have taken 2,500 men 300 days to have 
produced the bar and structural iron, and steel billets, and slabs, and 
ingots which were imported into the United States last year. It 
would have taken 300 men 300 days, besides those engaged in 
preparing the raw material, to have produced the plates and sheets, 
the corrugated iron, and the steel in various forms imported last year. 
It would have taken 3,700 men 300 days to have made the wire rods 
and the nails and the screws and wire in various shapes which were 
imported into the United States last year. It would have taken 800 
men 300 days to have made the washers, and the bolts, and the fish- 
plates, and railway-plates, the steel tire, hinge-iron, and tubes of steel 
which were imported into this country last year. It would have 
taken 500 men 300 days to have made the iron and steel rails which 
were brought into the United States from abroad last year. It would 
have taken 24,000 men to manufacture the tin-plate imported last 
year. Summing up these figures, 33,540 men, working for 300 days, 



THE MILLS TARIFF BILL. 311 

would have been required to produce the $50,000,000 worth of iron 
and steel which we imported last year. Do you want that volume in- 
creased ? Ten million sixty-two thousand is the aggregate number of 
days' work that were taken from the American workingmen, every 
day's work of which they could have performed, and were willing 
and ready to perform. [Applause.] Including all branches of labor 
required to manufacture the $50,000,000 worth of imported iron 
and steel and the manufacture thereof, taking into account the labor 
employed in the mining, transportation, and manipulation of the raw 
materials, and it would employ nearly, if not quite, 100,000 men. I 
do not know what you think about it, but I would not permit a single 
ton of steel to come into the United States if our own labor could 
make it. [Api^lause.] Let American labor manufacture American 
products. [Applause.] And if you do not like it, you know what 
you can do. [Laughter.] This Government is made for Americans, 
native-born and naturalized ; and every pound, every bushel, every ton, 
every yard of foreign product that comes into this country to com- 
pete with ours deprives American labor of what justly belongs to it. 

Do the farmers want increased importations of agricultural prod- 1 
ucts? Of barley alone to the value of 16,152,000 was imported last 
year, and vegetables to the value of 12,276,000. The total imports of 
the products of agriculture for the year 1887 free and dutiable were 
in value $197,308,240. Of this sum products worth 146,678,443 were 
admitted free of duty, and the remainder paid a duty. Do the agri- 
culturists want the duties all removed and their products driven from 
this market? Seven millions three hundred thousand dollars' worth 
of foreign glass came into this country last year. Do the glass 
blowers want this volume increased ? Five million five hundred and 
forty-five thousand dollars' worth of pottery of foreign make entered 
our market last year. Do the potters want this vast sum augmented ? 
Will the wool growers, who were compelled to compete with $16,- 
000,000 worth of foreign wool last year, relish the prospect of hav- 
ing their product further displaced next year ; and the labor engaged 
in woolen manufactories in this country, are they anxious that the 
$44,000,000 worth of woolen goods imported in 1887 in competition 
with the products of their labor shall be multiplied in 1889? All 
these importations will be greatly increased if this bill shall become 
a law. Every invoice of foreign goods which comes here, the like 
of which we can make, crowds out just so much American labor. Is 
there to be no limit to this foreign invasion ? 

I answer, Only to the extent that our people shall make importa- 



312 SPEECHES AND ADDRESSES OP WILLIAM McKlNLEY. 

tions impossible by reducing tlie cost of the home product. This will 
be the only restraint upon foreign merchandise glutting this market 
to the displacement of our own. If our present labor conditions are 
maintained, and this bill gets upon our statute-book, there will be 
no barrier in the way of a perfect inundation of foreign goods in the 
United States. It should not be forgotten that low duties or no 
duties substitute foreign imports for homemade and homegrown 
products, and to the extent of such substitution take work and wages 
from American labor. The effect of this bill — and there can be no 
other — is to increase importations, displace our own products by for- 
eign ones, diminish the output of our factories and mills, curtail the 
demand for labor, and reduce the wages of those who may be able 
to get work. This result is as clear and manifest to me as the sim- 
plest mathematical problem, and we have only to look at the wage 
scale of competing nations to know what our labor will come to 
with free trade or its equivalent. We can not compete with foreign 
nations without the restraint of a tariff unless we have equal condi- 
tions and equal labor cost. To do this we must introduce European 
conditions and European methods in the United States, and that is 
what this bill and all similar legislation means. 

" The trammels of trade must be removed," is the language em- 
ployed by the friends of this bill. How, and in what way? First, by 
removing the duty from raw materials used in manufacture, which of 
necessity will be at the expense and loss of those engaged in prepar- 
ing them. But to a tariff reformer that is of little account. This 
trammel must go, to enable the domestic manufacturer to compete 
with the foreign manufacturer at home and abroad. After this, and 
next in order, the trammel of high wages must be removed. This is 
the most important and essential of all. This is the chief obstruc- 
tion. Free raw material will not equalize the condition of manufac- 
turers at home with those abroad. Cheap labor, underpaid labor, 
underfed labor, will be the next demand of the advocates of this bill. 
Some of them have been frank enough to avow it already. This is 
the inexorable logic of the situation. If we are to control the whole 
of our own market and send our manufactures across the sea, it can 
be accomplished in one way only — by reducing the cost of the home 
product to the same or below the cost of the foreign product. To 
do this, every intelligent man knows, involves an enormous reduction 
of the wages of American workingmen. To this a revenue tarilf 
comes at last and from which there is no escape, and against it every 
true American interest cries out in an emphatic and earnest protest. 



THE MILLS TARIFF BILL. 313 

I propose a wiser and more patriotic solution of the difficulties of 
our financial situation. If we will buy more American goods and less 
foreign, we will reduce the income of the Government and leave and 
increase the surplus among the people. If we will buy more Amer- 
ican merchandise and less of foreign make, manufactures at home 
will run the year around and labor will be suitably rewarded and 
steadily employed. If we had some of that lofty patriotism evinced 
by the fathers, if we were more American in feeling, sentiment, and 
purpose, there would be fewer advocates of this bill. 

There has been much effort made in this debate to show that, after 
all, American workingmen get no better pay than the workingmen of 
other countries. Let us consider this branch of the discussion for 
a little while ; for if it be true that labor here is no better rewarded 
than elsewhere, then the strength of protection is much weakened. 
I beg to cite, against the unsupported statements of the gentlemen 
who have already spoken upon the other side, the testimony of Amer- 
ican workingmen whose opportunity for information from experience 
in both countries, and otherwise, makes their evidence incontroverti- 
ble. From the statements made March 10, 1886, before the Commit- 
tee on "Ways and Means, I read. Some of this testimony is two years 
old, but the only reason it is so is because laboring men were not per- 
mitted to testify this year. [Laughter and applause.] 

Mr. Eoger Evans, a workingman, speaking upon this subject, said : 

Of course you must not gauge the American workingman by the amount of 
coarse bread and meat which will be necessary for him to subsist upon. It can 
not be. The American workingman must have other things than those. He 
must be fed and clothed and able to maintain his family as becomes the dignity 
of an American citizen. 

Another, Mr. Philip Hagan, spoke as follows : 

Me. Chairman and Gentlemen: I was born under a free-trade Government, 
and I believe that the free-trade Government deprived me of an education. The 
reason of that was that I had to go to work when 1 was eight years of age ; and 
I remember also my little brother going to work under that free-trade Govern- 
ment when he was eight years of age. I remember well when there was a family 
of nine of us (including my father and mother), and when my wages for work- 
ing in a mill were ten cents per day. This was under a free-trade Government. 
Subsequently I went up higher there to five shillings a day, or $1.25. That was 
about the limit I could reach — sis and sixpence a day — and having to pay sixty 
cents out of that to my helper. Many members of this Committee know all this 
just as well as I am stating it, and I am not going to detain you any longer : but 
I will state that as soon as my limited knowledge informed me that labor was 
protected in the United States I came here. I declared my intentions and I be- 
came a citizen of the United States. And now I have a family, and now I make 



314 SPEECHES AND ADDRESSES OF WILLIAM McKINLEY. 

regularly fourteen shillings a day. The produce on which I lived in England 
came mostly from the United States, and certainly I ought to get it as cheap here 
as in England. I worked for five shillings a day in England, and I get fourteen 
shillings a day here. Consequently I am able to send my children to school, and 
they are getting an education, which their father did not get under a free-trade 
Government. 1 want to see these children raised up and educated as citizens. 

[Applause.] 

Mr. Thomas Williams said : 

As American citizens we can not be compelled to subsist upon what the 
working people of England, France, or other European countries subsist upon. 
The people of this country have made it just what it is, and in a very great meas- 
ure the workingmen have made it what it is. Some of us have come across the 
Atlantic, leaving the land of our birth, and have come here with the expectation 
that we were going to better our condition. We have bettered it in a great meas- 
ure. We will get along if you will let us alone. The manufacturers and our- 
selves will fight our own battles. 

Mr. Thomas P. Jones said : 

I came to this country to better my condition, and I am happy to say that 1 
have bettered my condition. I have made more wages than I ever made in the old 
country. It has been shown here to-day, and as I think very clearly, that this 
tinkering with the tariff is not for the best interests of the country — is not for the 
best interests of the wealth producers, of the men who build up this country. Then, 
gentlemen, I take it that it is your duty to throw this bill to the dogs, I cer- 
tainly do not stand to dictate to you in this matter, but I can assure you this 
far: that there is a school of education among the working people in this country, 
and that if this tinkering of the tariff is allowed to proceed ; if you will, in spite 
of our remonstrances, go on destroying our interests and shutting up the indus- 
tries of the country, our working people will be ere long sufficiently educated to 
step forth and say, " Gentlemen, thus far shall you go, and no further." We will 
elect men and send them here to legislate for our interests if you will not do so. 
We have the power, gentlemen, and you know it. Laborers in this country were 
never so cemented as they are to-day. One of the principal things which has 
helped us to that is this very bill which the honorable Chairman has brought be- 
fore this Committee. Where I live, in Chicago, you would be surprised to see 
the feeling that exists among the working classes. And why ? Because some 
of the people there worked in this country in free-trade times. I have a brother- 
in-law who, in free-trade times, traveled to his work, six miles, in the morning, 
getting there at sunrise, worked all day, and walked home at sundown, and all 
for a paltry 50 cents a day. I also have worked for 50 cents a day, but not in 
this country, thank God ! I have worked for 25 cents a day, but do not want 
to have to do it again. I have seen in the city of Glasgow, in Scotland, men 
working for 12 cents a day and a bowl of soup. That does not become an 
American citizen. We can not have such a state of affairs here, and we will not 
have it. 

I have a letter from Mr. William Barbour, of the Barbour Flax 



THE MILLS TARIFF BILL. 3I5 

Spinning Company, of Paterson, New Jersey, under date of March 
31st, in which occurs the following : 

Dear Sir : As a stockholder and director of the Barbour Flax Spinning Com- 
pany, of Paterson, N. J., I wish to make a statement to you regarding the flax- 
thread industry, and to call your attention to the effect which the proposed Mills 
bill would have upon it. While I am an American born, and the industry I 
represent in Paterson, N. J., is thoroughly American, I am also a large stock- 
holder in a flax spinning company in Ireland ; and that you may judge of the 
relative wages paid in the two countries, I would state that the pay rolls of the 
two mills, as recently compared, differed only about $500, the number of hands 
in the Irish mill being 2,900, against 1,400 in the Xew Jersey mill. . . , 

Yours, truly, William Barbour. 

That is, 1,400 American laborers are paid nearly the exact sum 
which 2,900 laborers are paid for the same labor in Ireland. And yet 
gentlemen would have us believe there is no difference in favor of the 
American workingmen ! [Applause.] 

The Singer Sewing Machine Company maintains a factory in 
Glasgow, Scotland, as well as its works in New Jersey. It employs 
one third more hands in its Scotch establishment, yet the pay roll 
there is only half that of its American works, the actual figures being 
118,000 and $35,000. 

Mr. Herbert. Will the gentleman allow me to ask him a question f 

Certainly. 

Mr. nERBEET. Can the gentleman tell me the price a sewing woman in 
Scotland pays for a sewing machine and the price a sewing woman in New Jersey 
pays for the same kind of a sewing machine ? 

Yes, sir. I am told the prices are about the same, except a sewing 
machine in Scotland costs more than a sewing machine in America. 
[Laughter and applause.] 

John H. Ross, Superintendent of the Boston Thread and Twine 
Company, under date of April 23, 1888, says : 

We are paying three times the average wages paid for similar labor through- 
out Europe. 

Here is a letter, under date of April 26, 1888, from the represent- 
atives of at least a half million workingmen of the United States : 

Washington, D. C, April 26, 1888. 
Dear Sir : Having seen by the papers that Mr. Mills and others, in their 
speeches in the House of Representatives upon the tariff bill, have asserted that the 
wages paid to labor were no higher in the United States than in Europe, we the 
undersigned desire to state, through you, to the members of Congress that such 
statements are misleading and false. Wages are higher in this country than in 
21 



316 SPEECHES AND ADDRESSES OF WILLIAM McKINLEY. 

3,ny other in the world. Notwithstanding the fact that the statements have been 
made by members on the floor of the House of Representatives that the tariff 
only benefits the manufacturer, and that they receive all the advantages from the 
protection given by the Government, we know that we receive our share of the 
benefits of protection on the industries we represent. 

We therefore emphatically protest against any reduction of the diitics that 
will bring us on a level with the low price paid for labor in Europe. We insist 
upon the maintenance of a strong protective tariff, in order to maintain an 
American standard of wages for American workingmcn. 
Respectfully yours, 
William Weihe. President of Amnl- Louis Arrington, Master Workman 
gnmated Association of Iron and Glass Blowers'' Assembly 143. 

Steel Woi-Jcers. J aues CAJ<ivBEhh, President of Local 

William Martin, Secretary of Assembly 300, Knights of Labor, 

Amalgamated Association of Iron Window Glass Workers of Amer- 

and Steel Workers. tea. 

John Conkling, Master Workman William J. Smith, President Ameri- 
National Assembly Iron and Steel can Flint Glass Workers' Union. 

Workers. Knights of Labor. William J. Dillon, Secretary. 

John Coffey, blaster Workman 
Glass Bloivcrs' Assembly 149. 

This bill proposes to equalize American production with Euro- 
pean production by bringing down American wages to the level of 
European wages, and, Mr. Chairman, I give you notice here to-day 
that you can not do it. [Applause.] 

Now as to farm wages here as contrasted with other countries. 
I have a letter from Mr. Dodge, the Statistician of the Agricultural 
Department : 

Washington, D. C, March 29, 1888. 
The wages of white labor in agriculture in this country are about $24 per 
month. In England the average wages paid for agricultural labor, according to 
J. S. Jeans, in the Royal Agricultural Society's Journal, were about $12.65 per 
month. Pay has been reduced since 1880. In the Argentine Republic the com- 
mon farm hands get $10 to $12 per month. In India agricultural wages are about 
$20 to $25 per year. Wages here in the wool growing industry are two or three 

times as much as in competing countries, . 4J| 

•Jll 

Consul Wamer, at Cologne, in his official report of May 21, 1886, 
to the State Department, gives a statement of the increase of exports 
from Germany to the United States, also the wages paid. The 
laborer, whether he works in iron or steel works, factories, stone 
quarries, or railroads, earns as a rule from 47 to 70 cents per day, and 
for skilled labor he may get from 80 to 93 cents per day. "Women, 
when employed, earn from 24 to 30 cents per day. Boys under six- 
teen receive 19 to 24 cents a day ; but an extra strong boy may earn 



THE MILLS TARIFF BILL. 3I7 

30 cents. The working hours are from six to six in summer and 
seven to seven in Aviuter, with one hour for dinner. The Consul Gen- 
eral at Vienna, in speaking of the Austrian laborer, says a home of 
his own, though ever so modest, is beyond his reach. Consul Tanner, 
at Chemnitz, Saxony, says : 

The customary wages to hired servants and on a farm are $57.19 per year, 
with board and lodging for men, and $28.50 for females. Field hands are paid at 
the rate of 5^ cents per hour. Women receive 2^ cents per hour. 

Speaking of their food, he says : 

Sugar or sirup is never allowed, and but very little milk. Tea is never 
used. For dinner they have meat and vegetables three times a week, and always 
on Sundays. 

This effectually disposes of the claim that wages in England and 
other countries are as high as here. 

The wage question in the South is interesting, and I have seen it 
no better stated, and the reason for maintaining protection nowhere 
more strongly presented, than in the report made this year on the 
American rice industry, prepared by the Eice Association and ad- 
dressed to the Association of Savannah. I read : 

During this period [from 1840 to 1860] the duty on foreign rice was twenty 
per cent ad valorem. In all the rice-producing divisions of the country slave 
labor was then employed, and no foreign rice was imported. 

It will be noted that slave labor operates as a positive prohibition 
to foreign imports. It takes the place of a protective tariff, and pre- 
sents to labor a choice between the one and the other. Cheap labor 
can successfully compete with cheap labor on equal terms and with 
equal chance of profits in the markets of the world without the aid 
of legislative protection, and what I have read shows the character of 
labor best adapted to free trade. This report says the conditions 
surrounding the American producer have entirely changed. Let me 
read : 

Since the emancipation of the slaves the cost of agricultural labor in the 
South has been greatly increased. In the rice districts of the Carolinas and 
Georgia field labor ranges from 40 to 60 cents, and the best expert (not mechan- 
ical) labor to $1 per diem. So that at no time since 1865 could rice have been cul- 
tivated as a staple product without the protection afforded by import duties upon 
foreign grain. 

Now, with what labor does the Southern rice grower compete? I 
will read from this report a quotation from the report of the United 
States Minister at Pekin : 



318 SPEECHES AND ADDRESSES OF WILLIAM McKINLEY. 

Coming now to the field hand whom the farmer hires, we arrive at the sub- 
stratum of labor. The average wages of an able-bodied young man is f 13 per 
annum, food, straw, shoes, and free shaving. Deducting $4 for his clothing, he 
saves f 8 annually, or may do so. Ten years' saving will enable him to buy one 
third of an acre of land (value per acre, $150) and necessary implements by which 
he can attain by his own labor a subsistence. ... In ten years he can become 
the possessor of two thirds of an acre. 

The report goes on further : 

In Japan, the field hands receive their food and lodging witli wages from 
$8.60 to .$12.96 per annum. The wages of females are about $6 per annum. 

In British India the per diem is 6 cents for males and 1^ cents for females. 

In Kurnei the highest permanent wages are 50 cents per month. 

In Borat men employed by the year get from 80 to 100 pounds of grain per 
month, and from 44^ cents to $1.98 per annum. 

In Bombay and Madras laborers are paid from 6 to 12 cents per diem. 

Hence the wages paid at the South in rice fields are many fold greater than 
those paid to laborers in the rice fields of Asia. Two thirds of the cost of pro- 
duction is disbursed in wages in the former. 

The report then concludes : 

The contrast in this element of cost should render unnecessary any further 
comment than that without the intervention of the existing import tax on Asiatic 
rice competition would seem impossible. 

This argument I commend for its force and fairness, and it makes 
out a strong case for the rice grower, who in my judgment deserves 
protection, which we cheerfully accord ; but the same argument 
applies with equal force to domestic wool, flax, and hemp and other 
products of agriculture and manufacture. They are all within the 
same principle ; all of them cultivated and produced with wage-labor 
greatly in excess of that paid abroad. Yet these American products 
are to be severely crippled, if not wholly destroyed. 

This statement of the rice grower is a most striking demonstration 
of the wisdom and necessity of protection. It shows that what is true 
in the North is true in the South. The chief and controlling question 
is one of labor, and so long as the labor cost here in any department 
of employment exceeds the labor cost in Europe so long we must have 
a protective tariff which shall compensate for this difference. And 
whether the labor is in the rice fields of Georgia and of the Carolinas, 
or in the wheat fields of the Northwest, in the factories of New Eng- 
land, the mines of Maryland and Virginia, or the furnaces of Penn- 
sylvania, Ohio, and New Jersey, it must be protected against the less 
rewarded labor whose products come in competition with theirs. 
Either this tariff must be maintained to maintain the difference of 
wages, or one of two things must inevitably occur : we must abandon 



THE MILLS TARIFF BILL. 319 

production in many of the most valuable fields of industry here, or 
our labor must come down to the standard of the competing labor ; 
and we may discuss theories until the frosts of December, but we can 
not alter the fact. 

This is the issue, and it can not be evaded. 

It is a fact worthy to call to the attention of the House that 
a labor organization representing a million workingmen, with its 
representatives in this city, whose sole duty it is to look after the in- 
terests of labor, has given no sign of approval of this bill. Not a 
petition has come through this source asking for its passage, or any- 
thing like it. Whatever utterance has been made has been in oppo- 
sition and protest. Every member on this floor has observed the 
activity of this Committee of Knights of Labor in regard to legisla- 
tion affecting tlie interests of labor, but in all that vast constituency, 
found in every State of the Union, found in the fields, in the facto- 
ries, workshops, and mines, no word or sign but of disapproval and 
condemnation has come. 

The expectation of cheaper clothes is not sufficient to justify the 
action of the majority. This is too narrow for a National issue. 
Nobody, so far as I have learned, has expressed dissatisfaction with 
the present price of clothing. It is a political objection ; it is a party 
slogan. Certainly nobody is unhappy over the cost of clothing except 
those who are amply able to pay even a higher price than is now 
exacted. And besides, if this bill should pass, and the effect would 
be (as it inevitably must be) to destroy our domestic manufactories, 
the era of low prices would vanish, and the foreign manufacturer 
would compel the American consumer to pay higher prices than he 
has been accustomed to pay under " the robber tariff" so called. 

Mr. Chairman, I represent a district comprising some 200,000 peo- 
ple, a large majority of the voters in the district being workingmen. I 
have represented them for a good many years, and I have never had a 
complaint from one of them that their clothes were too high. Have 
you ? [Applause on the Eepublican side.] Has any gentleman on this 
floor met with such complaint in his district ? 

Mr. Morse. They did not buy them of me. 

No ! Let us see ; if they had bought of the gentleman from 
Massachusetts it would have made no difference, and there could have 
been no complaint. Let us examine the matter. 

[Mr. McKinley here produced a bundle containing a suit of 
clothes, which he opened and displayed amid great laughter and 
applause.] 



320 SPEECHES AND ADDRESSES OF WILLIAM McKINLEY. 

Come, now, will the gentleman from Massachusetts know his own 
goods? [Eenewed laughter.] We recall, Mr. Chairman, that the 
Chairman of the Committee on Ways and Means talked about the 
laboring man who worked for ten days at a dollar a day, and then 
went with his ten dollars wages to buy a suit of clothes. It is the old 
story. It is found in the works of Adam Smith. [Laughter and 
applause on the Republican side.] I have heard it in this House for 
ten years past. It has served many a free trader. It is the old story, 
I repeat, of the man who gets a dollar a day for his wages, and having 
worked for the ten days goes to buy his suit of clothes. He believes 
he can buy it for just $10 ; but the " robber manufacturers " have 
been to Congress, and have got one hundred per cent put upon the 
goods in the shape of a tariff, and the suit of clothes he finds can not 
be bought for $10, but he is asked 120 for it, and so he has to go 
back to ten days more of sweat, ten days more of toil, ten days more 
of wear and tear of muscle and brain to earn the $10 to purchase the 
suit of clothes. Then the Chairman gravely asks, Is not ten days 
entirely annihilated ? 

Now, a gentleman who read that speech or heard it was so touched 
by the pathetic story that he looked into it and sent me a suit of 
clothes identical with that described by the gentleman from Texas, 
and he sent me also the bill for it, and here is the entire suit ; " rob- 
ber tariffs and taxes and all " have been added, and the retail cost is 
what ? Just $10. [Laughter and applause on the Republican side.] 
So the poor fellow does not have to go back to work ten days more 
to get that suit of clothes. He takes the suit with him and pays for 
it just $10. [Applause.] But in order that there might be no mistake 
about it, knowing the honor and honesty of the gentleman from Mas- 
sachusetts [Mr. Morse], he went to his store and bought the suit. 
[Laughter and cheers on the Republican side.] I hold in my hand 
the bill. 

Mr. Struble. Read it. 

Mr. McKinley (reading) : 

Boston, May 4, 18S3. 
J. D. Williams, bought of Leopold Morse & Co., men's, youths', aud boys' 
clothing, 131 to 137 Washington Street, corner of Brattle — 

I believe it is. 

Mr. Morse. Yes, Brattle. 

Mr. McKinley (reading) : 

To one suit of woolen clothes, $10. Paid. 

[Renewed laughter and applause.] 



THE MILLS TARIFF BILL. 321 

And now, Mr. Chairman, I never knew of a gentleman engaged 
in this business who sold his clothes without a profit. [Laughter.] 
And there is the same $10 suit described by the gentleman from 
Texas that can be bought in the city of Boston, can be bought in 
Philadelphia, in New York, in Chicago, in Pittsburg, anywhere 
throughout the country, at 810 retail the whole suit — coat, trousers, 
and vest — and forty ^er cent less than it could have been bought in 
1860 under your low tariff and low wages of that period. [Great ap- 
plause.] It is a pity to destroy the sad picture of the gentleman from 
Texas which was to be used in the campaign, but the truth must be 
told. But do you know that if it were not for protection you would 
pay a great deal more for these clothes? I do not intend to go into 
that branch of the question, but I want to give one brief illustration 
of how the absence of American competition immediately sends up the 
foreign prices, and it is an illustration that every man will remember. 
My friend from Missouri [Mr. Clardy], who sits in front of me, will 
remember it. The Missouri Glass Company was organized several 
years ago for the manufacture of coarse fluted glass and cathedral 
glass. Last November the factory was destroyed by fire. Cathedral 
glass was their specialty. Within ten days from the time that splen- 
did property was reduced to ashes the foreign price of cathedral glass 
advanced twenty-eight per cent to the American consumer. [Ap- 
plause on the Republican side.] Showing that whether you destroy 
the American production by free trade or by fire it is the same thing : 
the price goes up to the American consumer, and all you can do is to 
pay the price the foreigner chooses to ask. [Renewed applause.] 

Now, the gentleman had a lot of blankets here the other day. 
The very climax of the gentleman's speech was reached when he came 
to a description of the American blankets, and the enormous burdens 
that the tariff laid upon the poor man's bed-covering. Why, you 
would have supposed that he was enunciating the National issue for 
1888 ; and I think really that is about all they have left, now that 
Civil Service Reform is gone. [Laughter.] 

Now, what is the fact ? He told you that for one pair of five-pound 
blankets, which he exhibited, the price was $2.51, the labor cost 35 
cents, the tariff $1.90, and the difference between the labor and the 
duty $1.55. Then the gentleman from Texas turned to this House, 
and to his admiring associates and listening audience, and said, 
" Why does not the manufacturer give the laborer that $1.55, the 
difference between the labor cost and the duty?" which inquiry was 
followed by deafening applause. Did he not leave the impression 



322 SPEECHES AND ADDRESSES OP WILLIAM McKINLEY. 

upon the mind of every one that the manufacturer got the duty? 
He asked, Why did he not give it to the Laborer? and turning he 
said, " Of course he would not do that ; he put it into his pocket." 
I will tell you the reason, or at least a sufficient reason, why the 
manufacturer did not give it to the laborer. It was because he did 
not get it himself. I do not know where the gentleman got his 
fio-ures, but I have a careful statement from one of the leading 
blanket manufacturers of this country, and I intend to give the facts 

fully. 

Blankets are numbered according to grade and according to 
weight. There are several grades of five-pound blankets numbered 
1, 3, 3, 4, and 5. A No. 1 five-pound blanket made in the city of 
Philadelphia sells for $1.72. The labor represented in the blanket is 
87^ cents ; the duty is Sl.02. Of a scarlet blanket, five pounds, the 
price is $2.27; the labor is 87^ cents; the duty is $3.17. Of the 
white all-wool Falls of Schuylkill blanket the price is $3.62; the 
labor $1.05 ; the duty $2.60. Of the Gold-Medal blanket the price 
is $4.53 ; the labor $1.05 ; the duty $3.50. 

Now, Mr. Chairman, if the duty was added to the cost, what would 
the American manufacturers get for these blankets ? They should 
get for the first blanket $2.74. How much do they get ? They get 
only $1.72. They should get for the second blanket, duty added, 
$3.77. How much do they get ? They get $2.27. They should get 
for the third $5.12. How much do they get ? They get $3.17. They 
should get, duty added, for the fourth class $6.22. How much do 
they get? They get $4.35. They should get, duty added, for the 
highest grade, $8.03. How much do they get ? They get $4.05. 

Now, Mr. Chairman, what did these same blankets 'cost in 1860 
under a revenue tariff, under the free-trade domination of this coun- 
try by the Democratic party ? What did we pay for the same blankets 
that year as contrasted with what we pay now ? The blanket that 
sells to-day for $1.02 sold in 1860 for $2. The blanket that sells now 
for $1.45 sold in 1860 for $2.50. The blanket that sells now for $1.31 
sold in 1860 for $2.25. The blanket that sells now for $1.90 sold in 
1860 for $3.50. The blanket that sells now for $2.58 sold for $3.75 
in 1860. The blanket that sells now for $4.35 sold for $7.50 in 1860. 
The blanket that sells for $5.85 now, sold for $10 in 1860. The 
blanket that sells now for $6.80 sold for $13 in 1860. 

Now let us see about the wages, for that is an essential element 
in this question. In 1860 a spinner got $6 a week in the same estab- 
lishment, and I am speaking from the books of the manufacturer. 



THE MILLS TARIFF BILL. 323 

It is no idle and hearsay, second-hand statement that I am making, 
nor does it come from any foreign source, nor is it based on any 
information from abroad. It is taken from the actual books of a 
manufacturer of blankets in Philadelphia, who has been manufac- 
turing for a great many years. A spinner got for a week's work in 
1860,16. "What does he get now? Fifteen dollars. Six dollars a 
week in 18G0, and $15 a week in 1888 ! A piecer boy got $1.15 a 
week in 1860, and he gets $3.50 now. A weaver got $4 in 1860, and 
gets 110 in 1888. A finisher, unskilled, got $4.15 in 1860, and he 
gets $9 in 1888. A skilled finisher got $6 in 1860, and is paid $16 
in 1888. A dye-house hand, unskilled, got $4.25 in 1860, and he 
gets $9 in 1888. A common laborer got $4 in 1860, and he gets 17.50 
in 1888. A skilled laborer got $4.50 in 1860, and he gets $9 in 1888. 
An engineer got $6.50 in 1860, and he gets $16 in 1888. 

, The weekly earnings of the spinner in 1860 could buy three pairs 
of cheap blankets for one week's work. The spinner under American 
protection in 1888, for the price of one week's work can buy fifteen 
pairs of blankets. Talk about productive capacity ! Think about 
buying capacity ! The spinner buys his blankets for one half what 
they cost him in 1860 ; and he gets two and a half times as much for 
his labor in 1888 as he got in 1860. Do you wonder these men do 
not like your bill ? [Applause.] Do you wonder these men con- 
demn the action of the Committee for not listening to their protests? 
Why, you are preparing here to-day — and that is the purj^ose and 
effect of this bill — you are preparing to-day to reduce the scale of 
American wages. But I am not through with the blanket issue. 
You may think what I have already given is sufficiently exhaustive, 
but I have an actual transaction here that I know will be of interest 
to the members of this House, and, therefore, at the expense of 
wearying your patience, I am going to ask your attention to it. 
[Cries of " Go on ! "] 

On March 25, 1887, the United States Government advertised for 
bids for the purchase of blankets for the use of the medical depart- 
ment of the Army. This was in 1887, under the Cleveland adminis- 
tration. There were foreign bids and there were American bids. 
Now, if the President is right in saying that the duty is added to the 
cost, then the foreign cost, duty added, ought to be just equal to the 
American price. Now, what are the facts of this transaction ? As 
I have said, there was a foreign bid and there was an American bid. 
The foreign bid was for a four-pound blanket for medical purposes, 
to be furnished for $2.25^. For the same four-pound blanket for 



324 SPEECHES AND ADDRESSES OF WILLIAM McKINLEY. 

the same purposes the American bid was $2.56, there being a differ- 
ence of 30y% cents. Who do you suppose got the contract ? There 
was a foreign bid and an American bid, and the difference between 
the bids was 30 cents on each blanket. Now tell me which mamu- 
facturer, the American or English, got the contract ? Is there any- 
body here who would not have given it to the American, there beiug 
a difference of only 30 cents between the bids ? 

Is there any gentleman on this floor who would send abroad to 
get a pair of blankets merely to save 30 cents on them, thus taking 
away from the American manufacturer and the American farmer 
and the American laborer that much business? However that may 
be, that contract did go abroad. English labor, with foreign wool, 
made those 2,000 blankets for the use of our Army. American labor 
was boycotted, and they came in without paying any duty. The 
Government took advantage of a law that stands on the statute-book 
and admitted them free of duty. There being so little revenue in 
the Treasury, it was necessary, of course, to save every penny, so they 
took advantage of that law which permits the United States Govern- 
ment to bring its own goods in free of duty! 

Now let us look at the figures. The duty on blankets of that 
quality is 18 cents a pound and 35 per cent ad valorem. Eighteen 
cents a pound upon 2,000 blankets, four pounds each, is $1,440 ; 35 
per cent ad valorem is $1,576.40 — making a total duty upon those 
2,000 blankets, which were bought from a foreign blanket-maker, of 
$3,016.40. The cost of these blankets, free of duty, amounts to 
$4,504 ; with the duty added the total would be $7,520.40. If the 
President is right, and if the Chairman of the Committee on Ways 
and Means is right, in saying that this duty is added to the price to 
the American consumer, then $7,520.40 is exactly what the American 
price would be. Now, then, gentlemen, what was the American price? 
The American price was $5,120. That is, it was $2,400 less than the 
foreign cost, duty added. Without any duty, the difference between 
the cost of the American and the cost of the foreign blankets, the 
whole 2,000, was about $600. So you see the American manufac- 
turer does not get the duty, and that, I submit, is a sufficient reason 
why he does not give it to his workmen. I am very sorry, Mr. Chair- 
man, that the President of the United States did not know of this 
transaction, which had occurred under his own administration, so 
that he might have avoided making the blunder which he made in 
his message when he said that the duty was added to the cost. And 
I do not know what those around me may think about it, but I am 



THE MILLS TARIFF BILL. 325 

very sorry that our Government went abroad and bought those blank- 
ets just to save 30 cents apiece on them. [Laughter and applause on 
the Republican side.] 

Mr. Chairman, I wish that this Government of ours, which is sup- 
ported by its own people, and not by foreigners, would patronize its own 
people. I think that is an example of patriotism which should be set 
by those charged with public administration. I wish the men who 
pay the taxes to support this Government, to pay the President's sal- 
ary and other expenses of the Government, would be patronized 
when the Government has anything to buy ; don't you ? And are 
you not a little ashamed of this transaction, all of you ? I do not 
know whether the like was ever done under any former administra- 
tion or not ; but it never ought to be done, except in time of war or 
great public necessity, by any future administration of any party. 
[Applause on the Republican side.] 

All Europe is watching the progress of this bill. Its immediate 
promoters are not following it with keener vigilance and more ab- 
sorbing interest than their foreign sympathizers. All trades, all man- 
ufacturers across the Atlantic, are watching it with the deepest con- 
cern and anticipating the rich harvest which aAvaits them when our 
gates shall be opened, our industrial defenses torn down, and free and 
unrestrained access t© our splendid markets is afforded for the prod- 
ucts of their cheap labor. I have in my hand the Pottery Gazette, pub- 
lished in London, under date of January 2, 1888, from which I read : 

Earthenware is reported to be reduced to 30 per cent. This will help the 
trade, but we trust the men and masters here will not be too sanguine as to the 
results and upset the trade. 

Their information upon the earthenware schedule is quite accurate ; 
they had it in advance of the minority members of the Committee, 
and while, thoroughly pleased, the editor of the Gazette feels con- 
strained to advise the men and masters not to be too sanguine as to 
results and thereby upset the trade and defeat the bill. He advises 
them not to rejoice too soon; the news is almost too good to be 
true, and too much ecstasy on their part might prejudice it before 
the American House. Why should they rejoice when our tariff goes 
down? Our workingmen and employers have no such feeling. 
They dread it ; they oppose it ; they know what it means to them. 
They know that it will benefit their foreign rivals and bring distress 
to them. The reduction of duties upon earthenware will help Staf- 
fordshire, England, and their people know it well, while it will hurt 
American potters and the labor they employ. Again I read : 



326 SPEECHES AND ADDRESSES OF WILLIAM McKINLEY. 

Our American friends are expected over shortly — 

They are detained here during the pendency of this bill — 

when we shall hear what the effect is to be of the promised alteration in their 
tariff. The protected manufacturers in the States are already making efforts to 
stop the reduced imports, but it will be useless. 

With what confidence they speak ! Tliey mistake the temper of 
our people. They are staking too much upon the fulfillment of Dem- 
ocratic pledges. 

This long-nursed and favored class must give way a little to the consumer, 
whose long suffering has at length come to the front. 

The generous sympathy which the English manufacturer has for 
the American consumer is touching indeed ! 

The consumers are as ten to one of the United States inhabitants, and the 
protection to the pottery and glass manufacturer of the commoner description 
represents the cost of labor many times over. 

This reads like the speech of the gentleman from Texas [Mr. 
Mills]. It sounds so like the Democratic speeches of the last two 
weeks that we might well conclude that the geiitlemen of the ma- 
jority on this floor were representing an English and not an American 
constituency. Again I read : 

Is this fair to the housekeeper ? Is it right ? Nay, is it just ? 

This sympathy would have been more highly appreciated by the 
American consumer had it been extended at a time when the Staf- 
fordshire potteries controlled the American market, before we had 
become successful competitors, and when they were charging us 100 
per cent more for the coarse tableware that went into the houses of 
the masses than we now have to pay, resulting from the competition 
created by our own potteries. The hope of foreign producers is in 
the Democratic party. Foreign producers are already preparing for 
the new order of things. They are already establishing agencies in 
the United States, preparing to invade and occupy this market. I 
have among my notes a letter from Andris Jochams, of Charleroi, 
Belgium, proprietor of La Providence Eolling Mills, which gives un- 
mistakable evidence of preparation for the passage of this bill. Let 
me read the letter : 

Charleroi, Le I4 Mars, 1888. 
Dear Sirs : I beg you to take notice that we have appointed Messrs. Weir, 
Smith & Rogers as our sole and general agents in the United States of America 
for the sale of our architectural iron, as per circular inclosed, and you will oblige 
us in addressing your demands to them in future. With a prospect of a reduc- 
tion in duties on architectural iron and steel in your country we will be soon 



THE MILLS TARIFF BILL. 327 

ready to offer you such advantages in prices and quantity that you will find a nice 
profit in importing from us. 

We remain, dear sirs, with much respect, your obedient servant, 

Andris Jochams. 

Messrs. Weir, Smith & Rogers, 41 Broadway, New York. 

The American public, it will be observed, is assured that with the 
prospect of reduction of the duties on architectural iron and steel in 
our country they will be soon ready to offer us such advantages in 
prices and quality that we will find a nice profit in importing from 
them. Eeduced duties are to increase their profit, which, for the time 
at least, is to be divided so as to give to the American importer a 
" nice profit." 

There has been much discussion about trades and combinations in 
the course of this debate — trusts to control prices, diminish produc- 
tion, extinguish competition — and these are made a fruitful theme 
for vicious assaults upon the tariff. This is the only new feature that 
has been developed in the tariff discussion, and therefore deserves 
passing attention. I have no sympathy with combinations, organized 
for this or any other purpose, to control the supply and thereby con- 
trol prices. I regard all such as against public policy and opposed to 
fair and legitimate trade. They are, however, in no wise related to 
the tariff, and the tariff is in no way responsible for them. There is 
nothing in the tariff laws to promote or even suggest them. They 
are of foreign origin — they originated in free-trade countries. They 
can and do exist among producers and factors not in any way affected 
by the tariff. They are of recent date in the United States. The 
most widely known trusts of the country are not engaged in what are 
termed " protected industries." The oil trust and the whisky trust, 
which are so commanding and powerful, which make prices and alter 
them, control supply and production, these surely can not be charged 
to a protective tariff, for nothing which they make or offer as mer- 
chandise is subject to protective tariffs. The most oppressive trusts 
— oppressive to the American consumer — are those wliich deal in for- 
eign goods, and all of which will be promoted and strengthened by 
the passage of this bill. 

There is a trust or combination made up of all the plate glass 
manufacturers of Europe. I have here a circular dated London, 
April 25, 1887, which reads : 

Dear Sir: We beg to inform you that the Associated Plate Glass Manu- 
facturers have revised their prices for plate glass of all descriptions, and that, 
withdrawing all prf,vious quotations, we inclose you herewith our tariff of prices, 



328 SPEECHES AND ADDRESSES OF WILLIAM McKINLEY. 

the discount from which will be 30 per cent, with the exception of glazing glass 
used for silvering purposes, the discount from which will be 25 per cent. 
We are, dear sir, yours respectfully, 

London and MANcnESTER Plate Glass 
Manufacturing Company (Limited), 
Union Plate Glass Company (Limited), 
Pilkington Brothers. 
A de Grand ry. Agence Generale des Glaceries, Beiges. 

This trust is still in force. Here is a foreign combination to con- 
trol the price of plate glass, and the gentlemen on the other side are 
engaged in making the monopoly more complete and controlling by 
reducing the import duties now paid on their product and by reliev- 
ing them of a burden they now have to bear, and thus enabling them 
to break down American competition, which alone has reduced the 
price of plate glass, and now prevents the most extortionate exactions 
for the foreign product upon American consumers. 

Here, again, is an importers' trust in the same line of goods. I 
read from the New York Herald of February 28, 1888, an account of 
the investigation by a committee of the New York Legislature : 

Mr. James H. Heroy, an importer of plate and French glass, was next called 
to tell what he knew about the glass trust. He is a spry old gentleman who has 
been in the business for fifty years. Colonel Bliss asked the witness to identify a 
circular. It is a very peculiar circulra-, and will open the eyes of the public, if 
not the eyes of the Committee. It is as follows: 

"Henry C. Marrinner, P/aie and Sheet Glass Importer, No. 126 South Fifth ^ 

Avenue : 

"We beg leave to quote you 70, 10, and 5 per cent discount from the price] 
list of January 20, 1887, for French window glass. In case you wish to make any 
large purchases we can make you extra discounts as follows: If you receive from] 
us or any members of our Association in New York (which includes all the regu- 
lar importers), either all from one house or part from each of the houses, one] 
hundred boxes in one calendar month, you are entitled to an extra discount of 5] 
per cent; or if the deliveries to you in any one calendar month from any or all of 1 
these houses should amount to $1,000, then you will be entitled to an extra dis- 
count of 10 per cent. This is done, as you will see, to give large purchasers the! 
advantage over small buyers, which they have been long entitled to, but which 
could not be given to them until we made our present organization to regulate 
prices. This arrangement of rebates takes place from February 1st. We can 
also make deductions from the new price list of January 5, 1888, for colored, 
enameled, ground, and cathedral glass, extra discounts as follows : For orders 
of twenty cases, or 2,000 feet or more at one time, 10 per cent discount. For] 
import orders of 7,500 feet or more of cathedral and one hundred cases or morej 
colored, enameled, and ground glass we will make special prices, according to | 
the conditions of the order. 

" Yours, very truly, HsRO'i & Marrinner." 



THE MILLS TARIFF BILL. 329 

There was no doubt about the intention of that trust. Mr. Heroy said " it was 
simply " to make prices below which they would not sell their goods. At the last 
meeting he attended he thought it was the desire of the combination to reduce 
prices, and added : " We have not yet decided what to do in the case of a man 
who undersells us. "We do not decide these things in a hurry. As a result of the 
combination prices have advanced. I can't tell exactly the amount of the busi- 
ness done. It is largely exaggerated, but, including all branches, it is about $20,- 
000,000." 

I have also in my possession a copy of the trust contract. Not 
content with making this combination among themselves, they sought 
in every way possible to induce our American producers of plate glass 
to join them and assist in fleecing the American public. 

There is a foreign trust on china and earthenware. I have the 
evidence here in the London Pottery Gazette of March 10, 1888, from 
which I read : 

If any manufacturers arc not true to the rules of the new Association, the 
bond they will have signed will enable their fellow-manufacturors to sell them 
up " rump and stump." Nothing but the state of dire necessity into which the 
trade has fallen would tempt men to put their hands to such a bond. The 
scheme has just been successful with the china manufacturers. They have just 
obtained a second advance. If the keen buyers who always want to beggar the 
trade and reduce prices say to a manufacturer who will not sell at lower than the 
fixed rate, " Well, if I am forced to pay the Association price I will not buy 
from you," such manufacturer can reply: "All right; if you buy from another, 
and I have to stand for orders, I shall get my pull out of your business, for 
our rules will not let me suffer through refusing to reduce at your request." So 
you see one manufacturer can not be played off against the others. 

There is a foreign tin trust and a foreign iron trust to control 
prices and deprive the public of. the advantages of legitimate compe- 
tition. All these are to be benefited by this bill. Its author should 
change its title so as to make it read, " An act to promote foreign 
trusts and combines and break down American competition." We 
should set our faces against all these unnatural associations. We 
should crush out those at home, and do nothing to encourage those 
abroad who organize to prey upon the American market. We can 
control the former, but the lattei', while robbing our own citizens, are 
beyond our control and out of our jurisdiction. 

Mr. Chairman, while the Democratic majority, aided by the active 
support of the President, is seeking to break down the protective 
system, under which we have realized such unexampled prosperity, 
what do Ave witness elsewhere and in other countries ? Within the 
last six months there was held a great meeting in England repre- 
senting 30,000 workingmen. The meeting was called to consider 



330 SPEECHES AND ADDRESSES OP WILLIAM McKINLEY. 

the depressed condition of labor, and to demand such a change 
of the fiscal legislation as would abandon free trade in the United 
Kingdom and adopt a protective tariff. They resolved — 

First, That this meeting is strongly of the opinion that the time has come 
when all classes interested in the nation's prosperity should unite in demanding 
a revision of its fiscal system. 

Second, That this meeting records its opinion that all articles imported 
from abroad should bear a fair share of taxation with the same articles produced 
at home. 

These resolutions, with a suitable memorial, were presented to the 
British Parliament. During the same month the Chamber of Com- 
merce of Lincolnshire, England, adopted the following resolution : 

That this meeting is of the opinion that the fearful depression both of trade 
and agriculture is intimately connected with and both are caused by foreign com- 
petition, resulting in low prices, which are affecting all the industries of this coun- 
try ; that false free trade is a failure, obtained at the expense of the native pro- 
ducer. This meeting therefore begs to urge of their representatives in Parlia- 
ment and the Government the necessity of speedily taking measures to prevent the 
ruin impending over trade, and especially over the land of this country and all 
concerned in it, either as owners, cultivators, or tradesmen, and that a reconsid- 
eration should at once take place of our present fiscal arrangement. 

The working people of England find that competition with coun- 
tries employing cheaper labor too oppressive to bear longer, and are 
demanding, in the interest of themselves and families, to be saved from 
the further degradation it will entail. It is not American competi- 
tion they dread ; it is the competition of France, Germany, and Bel- 
gium — countries whose labor is even more poorly paid than the labor 
of England. They have come to appreciate at last that nothing but 
tariffs which are defensive in their character will save them from 
ntter ruin and destitution. We will be precisely in the same situation 
if this bill shall become a law. Our competition is with all the world, 
for no labor is so well paid as ours, and, being the highest paid labor, 
it invites the sharpest competition from the lowest. We will have no 
objection to free trade when all the nations shall bring the level of 
their labor up to ours ; when they shall accept our standard ; when 
they shall regard the toiler as a man, and not a slave; but we will 
never consent while we have votes and the power to prevent the drag- 
ging down of our labor to that of the European standard. [Ap- 
plause.] Let them elevate theirs; let them bring theirs up to our 
level, and we will then have no contention about revenue or protec- 
tive tariffs. We will meet them in open field, in home and neutral 
markets, upon equal footing, and the fittest will survive. [Applause.] 



THE MILLS TARIFF BILL. 331 

This is no time to seriously think of changing our policy. The best 
sentiment, the practical judgment of mankind, is turning to it. Sir 
Charles Tupper said a year ago in the Canadian House of Commons : 

No person who has carefully watched the progress of public events and public 
opinion can fail to know that a very great and marked change has taken place 
in all countries, I may say, in relation to this question (protection). ... In Eng- 
land, where it was a heresy to intimate anything of that kind a few years ago, 
even at the period to which I am referring, a great and marked change in public 
opinion has taken place. Prof. Sidgwick, a learned Fellow of Trinity College, 
Cambridge, and Professor of Moral Philosophy in that great university, and the 
gentleman who read at the meeting of the British Association in 1886 a paper on 
political economy, has published a work in which opinions that would have been 
denounced as utterly fallacious and heretical at that time have been boldly pro- 
pounded as the soundest and truest principles of political economy. . . . States- 
men of the first rank, men occupying high and commanding positions in public 
affairs in England, have unhesitatingly committed themselves to the strongest 
opinions in favor of fair protection to British industry. 

Why, even Canada, a dependency of free-trade England, is too 
wise to favor the false doctrines of her mother, and has rejected her 
teachings, and to-day is prosperous under a protective system, which 
in the main she borrowed from us. I wish every citizen might read 
the budget speech of the Minister of Finance in Canada, and contrast 
it with that of my honored but misguided friend from Texas. On 
May 12, 1887, in the Commons, Sir Charles Tupper, in speaking 
of a previous period in the history of Canada under free trade, 
said : 

When the languishing industries of Canada embarrassed the Finance Minister 
of that day, when, instead of a large surplus, large deficits succeeded year after 
year, the Opposition urged upon that honorable gentleman that he should en- 
deavor to give increased protection to the industries of Canada, which would pre- 
vent them from thus languishing and being destroyed. We were not successful 
— I will not say in leading the honorable gentleman himself to the conclusion 
that that would be a sound policy, for I have some reason to believe that he had 
many a misgiving on that question — but at all events we were not able to change 
the policy of the gentleman who then ruled the destinies of Canada. As is well 
known, that became the great issue at the subsequent general election of 1878, 
and the Conservative party being returned to power, pledged to promote and 
foster the industries of Canada as far as they were able, brought down a policy 
through the hands of my honored predecessor, Sir Leonard Tilley ; . . . and I 
have no hesitation in saying that the success of that policy thus propounded and 
matured from time to time has been such as to command the support and confi- 
dence of a large portion of the people of this country down to the present day. 

Under this system he proceeds to show that Canada has enjoyed 
a prosperity the like of which she never enjoyed before, and then, 
22 



332 SPEECHES AND ADDRESSES OF WILLIAM McKINLEY. 

instead of recommending a reduction of duties, proposes the increase 
of duties upon certain foreign merchandise, to the end that Canadian 
industries may be fostered thereby. 

Here is what the gentleman from Texas [Mr. Mills], our premier, 
says. Mark the contrast : 

Now, sir, what has been the result of this policy fof protection] ? Enormous 
taxation upon the necessaries of life has been a constant drain upon the people ; 
taxation not only to support the expenditures of the Government, but taxation 
so contrived as to fill the pockets of a privileged class, and take from the people 
five dollars for private purposes for every dollar that it carries to the public 
Treasury. . . . This is one of the vicious results, etc. . . . What use have our 
manufacturers for the tariff at all? Why are they constantly beseeching Con- 
gress not to ruin them by reducing war rates ? ... It is a policy that is at war 
with the institutions of this country — the concentration of the wealth of the 
country in the hands of a few. 

My friend has not read with profit or purpose the history of his 
country. Wedded to the economic teachings of Calhoun and Walker, 
he has not observed their contradiction and refutation in the match- 
less progress of his country. He still lives in the past. The con- 
dition of his own State, her boundless resources, appeal to him, but 
her voice, if heard, is not heeded. He seeks to throw across her path- 
way and the pathway of the Republic the tattered dogmas of half a 
century ago, and stop the wheels of progress, interrupt our advancing 
civilization, and stifle the just aspirations of the people. The coun- 
try is in no frame of mind for such retrogression ; against it every 
instinct of humanity revolts, every noble sentiment protests. 

If the people of the country want free trade or a strictly revenue 
tariff, it is their privilege to have it. The majority voice should be 
controlling, but it must be after a full, fair, and candid expression. 
I do not believe that a majority in this House were instructed by 
their constituents to vote for this bill or any other committed to the 
doctrine of free trade. If the issue had been so understood many of 
the gentlemen who are promoting this legislation would not be here. 
I do not believe the country understood, in 1886, that if the Demo- 
cratic party carried a majority in the House it would do what is 
now being proposed. How many Representatives on that side of the 
House would have been left at home upon a platform favoring free 
wool and substantially free agricultural products ? More by far than 
your majority. 

The opportunity of the people of this country is next November. 
If they want free trade they can so vote, but they must have it after 
full discussion. The majority now on the floor of this House were 



THE MILLS TARIFF BILL. 333 

not instructed by the elections in 1886 to vote for this bill ; there was 
no such issue. Wherever we sought to make it the issue it was ob- 
scured or denied by Democratic protectionists in the North. Nobody 
knows that better than the gentleman from Pennsylvania [Mr. Scott] , 
the friend of labor. [Laughter.] 

The House of Representatives, I say, was not elected upon that 
issue. I challenge your party, under the instructions given you by 
the people two years ago, to force this measure through the House. 
Go back to the people and ask to be returned on this bill and the 
President's message ; do not dodge or equivocate, but stand up to the 
issue squarely ; make your platform in Connecticut the same as in 
the Carolinas, in New York and New Jersey the same as Mississippi 
and Georgia ; and then, if your majority is returned, you will be 
commissioned to adopt this bill or something like unto it, abandoning 
the American for the British policy. [Applause.] The details at 
this time can be of little moment. This bill points to the overthrow 
of the protective system ; that is its tendency and mission. 

It is the system which is on trial ; not one item or one schedule 
of the tariff, but the principle upon which the whole rests. Nothing 
which that side of the House can do or will do touching the tarilf 
can be other than hurtful. If it corrects a single abuse or inequality 
or incongruity, it will be at the expense and sacrifice of many great 
interests. It is destruction, not correction, you are after. When 
your bill levels at all it levels down. When it equalizes articles be- 
longing to the same group and family, representing the same raw 
material and the same amount of labor, its equality is with the lowest. 
It does not help that which bears the lowest duty, but destroys that 
which bears the highest. It injures the whole, that it may put the 
whole upon the same footing. It gives no consideration or protection 
to a single home industry or American product, except probably 
cotton and rice. It puts no languishing American industry on its 
feet ; it sets in motion no idle spindles ; it starts no new fires ; it 
creates no increased demand for labor ; if an industry is down, it 
keeps it there ; its very breath is paralyzation ; it injures what it 
touches, and touches that it may injure. [Great applause.] 

If the tariff needs revision— and in some particulars revision 
would improve it — it must be done by its friends and in full recog- 
nition of the principle of protection. It must be done by a party 
with courage enough to raise duties if needed, and reduce them if 
unnecessary, and with wisdom enough to foresee and provide against 
redundant revenue, and in correcting inequalities prudent enough to 



334 SPEECHES AND ADDRESSES OF WJLLIAM McKINLEY. 

inflict no injury upon any, but bring good to all. That is the correc- 
tion of inequalities to which the Republican party pledged itself in 
its National platform of 1884, and for the fulfillment of which it has 
not since then had a majority in the House to enforce. If it had, it 
would have long ago been done. It will do it when it is again in 
control. Not correction which destroys, but which makes simple, 
harmonious, and equitable all of the provisions of the tariff. 

It is fortunate that our Government is founded upon the consent 
of the governed, that every citizen has a voice in making and un- 
making the House of Representatives every two years, and even if he 
is deprived in the interim of a hearing, there is one day when he can 
speak and vote and make his influence felt [applause] ; for I tell you, 
Mr. Chairman, if the workmen were without the ballot we would 
have free trade within twelve months, and their protests and ours 
would be as idle as the wind which none of us heeds. Fortunately 
for them they have a vote, and if they fail to use it for their homes, 
and their firesides, and their families, they will show much less man- 
hood, independence, intelligence, and righteous resentment than I 
am sure they possess. It was the ballot in the hands of labor, to be 
used next November, which kept coal and iron ore from being placed 
on the free list in this bill ; and unless the majority is reversed in this 
body and the Fifty-first Congress placed under Republican control, 
these products, with others of equal importance, will be stricken from 
the dutiable and placed upon the free list. This is only the initial 
step. The Chairman of the Committee has so declared. Listen to 
these words found in his speech opening this debate : 

We should lay taxes to obtain revenue, but not restrict importations. We 
should place every material of manufacture on the free list. 

This is the proclamation made by the premier of this body ; this 
is in direct line with the President's message ; this is the plan, the 
policy, and the purpose of the Democratic party. The elections once 
safely over, the party now in control again invested with power, and 
the work will go on to the end. The Democratic protectionists and 
patriots must get out of the way. Even Democrats who believe 
that protection is " a local issue," and as such worth maintaining, 
must not further interrupt the procession. You saw an exhibition of 
the spirit this morning [laughter], when the generous courtesy of 
ray friend from Kentucky [Mr. Breckinridge] saved his party from 
a most unfortunate embarrassment. The hope of the country, Mr. 
Chairman, is in the ballot. The future, and, as I conceive, the wel- 



THE MILLS TARIFF BILL. 335 

fare and progress of the Republic, tlie future condition of the wage- 
earners, depends upon the issue to be settled in November. Ameri- 
can citizens who love their country must be on guard on that day of 
supreme concern ; it is their day, their one great opportunity. Parties 
must be subordinated to the great interests of the masses. No party 
necessity is great enough to force its adherents against its country's 
best interests. I care not what in the future may be the party name 
which stands for this system, which stands for the people, I will 
follow its flag under whatever designation or leadership, because it is 
my country's flag, and represents its greatness and its glory. 

Now, Mr. Chairman and gentlemen, I conclude, and thank you for 
your kind attention and for the generous indulgence of the House. 
[Long and continued applause, and cries of " Vote ! "] 



NOT A CANDIDATE. 

Speech at the Eepublican National Convention at Chi- 
cago, Illinois, June 23, 1888. 

Mr. President and Gentlemen of the Convention : I am 
here as one of the chosen representatives of my State. I am here by 
resohition of the Republican State Convention, passed without a sin- 
gle dissenting voice, commanding me to cast my vote for John Sher- 
man for President, and to use every worthy endeavor for his nomina- 
tion. I accepted the trust because my heart and judgment were in 
accord with the letter and spirit and purpose of that resolution. It has 
pleased certain delegates to cast their votes for me for President. I 
am not insensible to the honor they would do me, but in the presence 
of the duty resting upon me I can not remain silent with honor. I 
can not, consistently with the wish of the State whose credentials I 
bear, and which has trusted me ; I can not with honorable fidelity to 
John Sherman, who has trusted me in his cause and with his confi- 
dence ; I can not, consistently with my own views of personal integ- 
rity, consent, or seem to consent, to permit my name to be used as a 
candidate before this Convention. I would not respect myself if I 
could find it in my heart to do so, or jjermit to be done that which 
could even be ground for any one to suspect that I wavered in my 
loyalty to Ohio, or my devotion to the chief of her choice and the 
chief of mine. I do not request — I demand, that no delegate who 
would not cast reflection upon me shall cast a ballot for me. 



) 

I 



PROTECTION AND TPIE SOUTH. 

Address before the Piedmont Chautauqua Association at 
Atlanta, Georgia, August 21, 1888. 

Fellow-Citizens : I make my acknowledgments to the Piedmont 
Society for the courtesy and cordiality of its invitation, which has 
given me the opportunity to meet for the first time an assemblage 
of the citizens of Georgia. I have come upon the suggestion 
of the Committee to address you upon a public question of great 
National import, which concerns not only the prosperity of one 
section but of all sections of our common country, and which is of 
commanding interest to our sixty millions of people. It is no new 
subject I propose to consider. It is as old as government by men. 
Taxation, with few exceptions, has been the chief and absorbing issue 
for the more than a century of the Republic. 

The Government was scarcely launched before its discussion com- 
manded the best thought of the statesmen of the time, and in varying 
degrees it has been prominently before the public ever since. The 
different theories of taxation have an interest now which they have 
never possessed before. Public thought is awakened, and the citizen 
is investigating for himself. Frank discussion and thoughtful con- 
sideration of the two conflicting theories are therefore demanded in 
the present state of the public mind, as well as by the condition of our 
National Treasury. How taxes are to be raised to support the Govern- 
ment, and by what method they can be levied and collected so as to 
bear most lightly upon the people, and at the same time promote 
rather than retard National prosperity, is Jie scope of the theme 
which I propose to discuss before you to-day. 

There are some things upon which all are in accord, and which 
are so manifest as to require no argument or amplification. They 
are admitted facts. Among them are, that the United States must 
have sufficient money to meet its current expenses and maturing 
obligations ; that the United States as a political society is without 



338 SPEECHES AND ADDRESSES OP WILLIAM McKINLEY. 

assets, without money, and lias no income except what it secures by 
/ taxes collected from its people. It must collect its money, whatever 
/ may be its actual requirements, either by direct taxes or by duties 
upon imports. There are few people to be found in the country who 
seriously favor the system of direct taxation for governmental ex- 
penses — that is, taxing the people, their property, real and personal, 
their professions and employments. The American sentiment is 
practically unanimous in favor of raising at least a large share of the 
revenue for the Government by levying duties upon foreign im- 
portations. 

It requires nearly $350,000,000 every year, or almost a million 
dollars every twenty-four hours, to meet the necessary wants of the 
public service, and there is general assent to the proposition that the 
bulk of this vast sum shall be raised from customs sources. Up to 
V this point there is substantial concurrence, and here individual and 
party sentiment divide, and I believe honestly divide, and to these 
lines of division, and the principles upon which they respectively rest, 
I invite your respectful consideration. 

Free traders, so called — or, to be more exact, the advocates of a 
revenue tariff — believing with the other school of political economists 
in import duties, insist that duties shall be levied upon that class of 
foreign products which are not produced in the United States, the 
principle being that revenue is the sole and only object of such taxa- 
tion, and that a duty levied upon such foreign products as have little 
or no home competition will secure the largest revenue with the 
smallest rate of duty. And this is altogether true ; for whenever you 
can find a foreign article which the people of this country require and 
which of necessity they must import, any duty, however low, indeed 
the very minimum, will produce revenue ; for inasmuch as there is 
no home-produced article to contend for any part of the home 
market, importations will go on unchecked, and the revenue derived 
therefrom will be limited only by the extent of the importations, 
influenced by the necessities of our people and their capacity to buy. 
A familiar and simple illustration is furnished in the products of tea 
and coffee. Neither of these great staple articles is produced in the 
United States. The demands of our people for these products — and 
they extend to every home and fireside in the land — are supplied from 
abroad. Now, any tax thereon, however slight and insignificant, 
would produce a very considerable revenue to the Government ; and 
this illustrates what is commonly understood as a " revenue tariff." 
If, however, the duty is levied upon the foreign competing product, 



■■^J! 
:^>'. 



PROTECTION AND THE SOUTH. 339 

and it is made so low, having revenue only in view, then the effect is 
to destroy home comj^etition and increase the revenue therefrom by 
increasing importations. 

Hon. J. Eandolph Tucker, of Virginia, an eminent lawyer and 
experienced statesman, in a speech delivered in the House of Kepre- 
sentatives. May 18, 1878, defined a revenue duty as follows : 

Therefore, as no higher duty ought to be laid than is needed to raise the 
requisite revenue on any particular article, it follows that the true revenue duty 
is the lowest duty which will bring the required revenue. 

This definition is a fair and frank one, and I accept it. A revenue 
tariff is, therefore, such a one as will produce the largest revenue from 
the lowest duty. The lowest rate of duty will encourage importa- 
tions, diminish home production, and inevitably increase the revenue ; 
it will of necessity check competition at home and send our merchants 
abroad to buy ; it affords no protection, not even incidental, for, the 
very instant you discover that such duty favors the home producer, 
that instant you discover that importations and revenue are checked, 
and that our own producers are able to control the home market, or a 
part of it. Then at once the advocate of a revenue tariff reduces 
the duty — brings it down to the true revenue standard ; for it must 
not be overlooked, according to the free-trade maxim, that " where 
protection begins there revenue ends," and the question of revenue is 
all-controlling. A revenue tariff is inconsistent with protection ; it is 
intended for a wholly different purpose. It loses its force and char- 
acter as a genuine revenue tariff when it becomes to any extent pro- 
tective. It has but one object, the raising of revenue. It can have 
but one effect — that of opening up our markets to the foreign pro- 
ducer — impoverishing the home producer and enriching his foreign 
rival. 

England is more nearly a free-trade country than any other, and 
her system of taxation furnishes an unmistakable example of the 
practice and principle of a revenue tariff. Her import duties are 
imposed almost exclusively upon articles which can not be produced 
by her own people upon her own soil. Tobacco, snuff, cigars, 
chicory, cocoa, currants, figs, raisins, rum, brandy, wine, tea, and 
coffee, these are the articles from which her customs revenue is 
derived — articles, in the main, not produced in England, but which 
must be supplied from abroad ; while practically all competing 
products of foreign make and production are admitted through her 
customhouses free of duty. A brief statement of the dutiable im- 
ports of Great Britain will not be without interest. 



3i0 SPEECHES AND ADDKESSES OP WILLIAM McKINLEY. 

It will be observed that her duties are more largely imposed upon 
peculiarly American products than upon any other. The duty upon 
tobacco is, according to moisture, from 84 to 92 cents per pound for 
the raw or unmanufactured article ; and if manufactured, it pays a 
duty of from $1.04 to $1,16 per pound. The manufactured article is 
made dutiable at 20 cents a pound greater than the raw product, 
which, with all of England's boasted free trade, is intended as a pro- 
tection to those engaged in the manipulation of tobacco. It is almost 
prohibitive to Americans who would export manufactured goods. 
The ad valorem equivalent of the duty on tobacco is nearly two thou- 
sand per cent. Cigars pay a duty of $1.32 per pound, and from 
tobacco and cigars $43,000,000 of duties are collected annually. The 
duty on tea is eight cents per pound. How would the American 
enjoy paying such a duty upon this article of every-day use ? The 
duty collected from this source is over $18,000,000 annually. Coffee 
pays a duty of three cents per pound, but if ground, prepared, or in 
any way manufactured, it must pay a duty of four cents a pound — 
another example of where England protects those engaged in manu- 
facture. Cocoa pays a duty of two cents a pound, but if it is in any 
form subjected to manufacture it pays four cents a pound, the duty 
on the manufactured article being double that on the raw material. 
Besides the articles I have named, there are about ninety or a hun- 
dred others, such as patented and other medicines, chiefly of Ameri- 
can production, which are dutiable at $3.36 per gallon. More than 
$96,000,000, or nearly one fourth of the British revenues, are raised 
from customs duties. 

You will note the character of taxation to which the revenue re- 
former invites the people of the United States. Both the breakfast 
table and the sick room are made to bear a large part of the burden 
under the British system of taxation. It is not without significance 
that the nearer we approach this system the more generous the be- 
stowal of British commendation. Every step we take in that direc- 
tion, every enlargement of the free list of competing foreign products, 
every reduction of duty upon such products, is hailed as a vindication 
of Cobden and a beneficence to British interests. It is in vain for 
British statesmen to assure us that their system is best for us. We 
are not accustomed to look to our commercial rivals for disinterested 
favors. 

It is folly [said "Washington in his Farewell Address] in one nation to look 
for disinterested favors from another ; it must pay, with a portion of its inde- 
pendence, for whatever it may accept under that character. There can be no 



PROTECTION AND THE SOUTH. 341 

greater error than to expect or calculate upon real favors from nation to nation. 
It is an illusion which experience must cure and which a just pride ought to dis- 
card. 

"We are not, Mr. President, insensible to the good opinion of man- 
kind, or of the English-speaking race, but when it is to be had only 
at the expense of our industrial independence, at the sacrifice of the 
dignity and independence of labor and the destruction of National 
prosperity, we must regard it with supreme suspicion, and turn from 
it as the eulogy of selfish interest and the commendation of interested 
greed. 

The other theory of taxation, and the one which I believe to be 
essential to American development and National prosperity, is based 
upon an exactly opposite principle. It permits all articles of foreign 
production, whether of the field, the factory, or the mine, except 
luxuries only, which we can not produce in the United States, to 
enter our ports free and unburdened by customhouse exactions. 
The duty is to be imposed upon the foreign competing product — that 
is, the product which, if brought into this country, would contend 
with the products of our own soil, our own labor, and our own fac- 
tories, in our own markets. Under this system, if the foreign pro- 
ducer would enter our market with a competing product he must 
contribute something for the privilege which he is to enjoy, and this 
something, in the form of duties, goes into the Treasury, furnishing 
revenue to the Government ; and these duties operate to protect the 
joint product of labor and capital against a like foreign product. 

This mode of levying duties answers a double purpose. It pro- 
duces revenue to the Government, and at the same time fosters and 
encourages the occupations of our own people, j^romotes industrial 
development, opens up new mines, builds new factories and sustains 
those already established, which in turn furnish employment to labor 
at fair and remunerative wages. A revenue tariff accomplishes but a 
single purpose — that of raising revenue ; it has no other mission ; 
while a protective tariff accomplishes this and more — it brings revenue 
to the American treasury and discriminates in favor of the Ameri- 
can citizen. A revenue tariff invites the product of foreign labor 
and foreign capital to occupy our markets free and unrestrained in 
competition with the product of our own labor and capital. A pro- 
tective tariff invites the product of foreign labor and foreign capital 
which are necessary to the wants of our people (which we can not 
produce in the United States) to occupy our markets and go untaxed 
to the people ; but it insists that every foreign product the like of 



342 SPEECHES AND ADDRESSES OF WILLIAM McKINLEY. 

■which is produced at home, or can be successfully, in quantities capa- 
ble of supplying the domestic consumption, shall, whenever necessary 
to maintain suitable rewards to our labor, bear a duty which shall not 
be so high as to prohibit importations, but at such a rate as will pro- 
duce the necessary revenues and at the same time not destroy, but en- 
courage, American production. It says to the world of producers : " If 
you want to share with the citizens of the United States their home 
market, you must pay for the privilege of doing it. Your product 
shall not enter into free and unrestrained competition with the prod- 
uct of our own people, but shall be discriminated against to such an 
extent as to fully protect and defend our own." 

Hon. Alexander Stephens, a distinguished citizen of your own 
State, and endeared to the people of the South, stated, on June 23, 
1882, in a speech in the House of Representatives, the theory so well 
that I beg to quote him : 

The best way to raise revenue is by duties upon imports. They bear less 
heavily on the taxpayers, and, as legislators, that is what we should look to. In 
levying duties on imports you can at the same time make foreign producers pay 
for the use of your markets, and in that way, incidentally and properly, give aid 
and protection to American industry. It is not true, as a general proposition, 
that the consumer pays all the duty imposed upon commodities brought from 
other countries. This is a question that I can not now argue. In most instances, 
where the duties are judiciously laid, they are borne partly by the consumer and 
partly by the importer. To allow Congress thus to raise revenue by duties upon 
imports was one of the main objects in establishing the Federal Constitution of 
1787. This system of internal revenue taxation by excise and stamp duties was 
not favored by the fathers of the Republic in times of peace. I speak plainly, 
and say that it was looked upon then as not only of British origin, but there was 
always the odium of British Toryism attached to it in the American mind. There 
was never any legislation more abhorrent to the people of this country, even in 
their colonial condition, than 'What was known as the infamous Stamp Act. 

In marked contrast with the utterances of the theorist of the pres- 
ent is this patriotic utterance of Georgia's beloved and lamented states- 
man. It is alleged as a serious objection to protective duties that the 
tax, whatever it may be, increases the cost of the foreign as well as 
the domestic product to the extent of such tax or duty, and that it is 
wholly paid by the consumer. This objection would be worthy of 
serious consideration if it were true, but, as has been demonstrated 
over and over again, it is without foundation in fact. Wherever the 
foreign product has successful competition at home the duty is rarely 
paid by the consumer. It is paid from the profits of the foreign 
manufacturer, or divided between him and the merchant or the im- 
porter, and diminishes their profits to that extent. Duty or no duty, 



PROTECTION AND THE SOUTH. 343 

without home competition the consumer would fare worse than he 
fares now. There is not in the long line of staple products consumed 
by the people a single one which has not been cheapened by com- 
petition at home, made possible by protective duties. There is not 
an article that enters into the every-day uses of the family which is 
produced in the United States that has not been made cheaper and 
more accessible as the result of home production and development, 
which was to be secured only by the sturdy maintenance of the pro- 
tective system. While this is true of protective tariffs, exactly the 
opposite is true of revenue tariffs. They are always paid by the con- 
sumer. With a duty put upon a foreign product the like of which 
is not produced at home, and which enters our markets free from 
home competition, the cost to the American consumer is exactly the for- 
eign cost with the duty added, whatever that may be, much or little. 
Supposing, for example, there was a tax upon tea and coffee : there 
being no production of these articles in the United States, and there- 
fore no competition here, the cost to the American public would be 
the cost abroad and the duty added. We imported last year 526,- 
489,000 pounds of coffee. A duty of ten cents a pound would have 
produced to the Government over $52,000,000, which would have 
been paid by the 12,000,000 families of this country, consumers of 
this article. Eighty-seven million five hundred and eighty-four 
thousand pounds of tea were imported last year. At ten cents a 
pound 88,000,000 and upward would have gone into the Treasury, 
every dollar of which would have been paid by our own people. Take 
sugar as another example. We produced last year in this country 
about eight per cent of what our people consumed. The duty col- 
lected from imported sugar amounted to 158,000,000. The domestic 
production was so inconsiderable, as compared with the domestic 
consumption, as to have had little, if any, appreciable effect upon the 
price to the consumer, and therefore this sum was almost wholly paid 
by our own citizens ; and the cost of sugar to the American consumer, 
because of the inadequate home supply, is practically the foreign 
price, duty added, the domestic production being so small, contrasted 
with the domestic demand, that it in no wise controlled or influenced 
the price. 

The price to us is fixed by the ninety-two per cent which came 
from abroad, plus the amount of the duty collected at the custom- 
house. It would have been otherwise if the bulk of our consumption 
was produced at home. If you take any American production which 
is large enough to supply the domestic demand the effect is different. 



344 SPEECHES AND ADDRESSES OF WILLIAM McKINLEY. 

Then the foreign production must undersell the home production in 
order to get a foothold in this market, and therefore the foreign 
producer is willing to surrender the whole duty, or a considerable 
part of it, consenting to less profits for the sake of extending his 
markets, with the hope of ultimately destroying home competition. 
The real question, therefore, is, whether in raising money to supply 
the Government needs we should have thoughtful concern of the in- 
dustrial interests of the people we represent, or, discarding every 
other consideration, should adjust our duties upon the revenue prin- 
ciple to secure revenue, and revenue only. The money must be 
raised, and in raising it the protectionist is mindful of the interests 
of our own people. The tariff reformer is considerate of everybody 
else's interest but our own. I can not understand why any patriotic 
citizen should prefer a revenue tariff to a protective tariff. I can not 
understand why, so long as taxation must be resorted to (and that 
will be the case so long as the Government exists), it should not be 
raised upon the foreign article which competes with the domestic 
article, and thus discriminate in favor of our own, rather than to 
admit to equality in our markets untaxed, and upon equal terms with 
our own producers, the products of our foreign rivals. 

The protective system but invokes the highest law of Nature, that 
of self-preservation. There is every reason, founded in justice, why 
the American producer should in every constitutional way be favored 
as against the foreign producer whose products compete with his. 
This is our natural market. We have made it. We have made it 
after a century of struggle. We have made it at an enormous cost of 
capital and exertion of brain and muscle. We. have preserved it 
against foreign wars and domestic conflicts, at great sacrifice of men 
and money. The foreign producer has contributed nothing to the 
growth or development of the country. Whatever influence he has 
exerted has been against us and to our detriment. He has nothing 
in common with us. He is without the jurisdiction of our laws. He 
can not be reached by the local taxgatherer. He is exempt from all 
civil obligations in every part of the Republic. We can make no requi- 
sition upon him either in peace or in war. Our mode of reaching 
him is through the product he would send to our markets. We can 
demand of him that his merchandise shall make contribution to our 
treasury if he would enjoy the use of our markets. ^Ye can make 
him serve us in no other way. 

In the case of a revenue tariff, as I have pointed out, his product 
never bears the burden. Whatever we put upon it is borne by our 



PROTECTION AND THE SOUTH. 345 

own people, and in no wise shared by him. This principle of caring 
for our own is founded upon the highest authority, human and 
Divine. It commences with the family, extends up through the com- 
munity to the State, and at last to the Nation. There is no city in 
the country in any section that does not invoke this principle in the 
administration of municipal government for the protection and en- 
couragement of its own citizens. 

The itinerant vender, the street auctioneer, the peddler, is taxed 
in every city of the land. If he exposes his wares upon the streets of 
Atlanta at public auction, I doubt not, the city government compels 
him to pay a tax for the privilege of doing it, and that tax is added 
to the ordinary revenues of the city to assist in meeting its obliga- 
tions. Now, why is this done? Upon exactly the same principle 
that we tax the foreign competing product under the system of pro- 
tection. It is done to protect and defend the resident merchants of 
your city, who are with you always, within your jurisdiction, subject to 
your laws, contributing to the wealth and progress of your city, paying 
taxes to adorn and beautify it, paying taxes to support your public 
schools and make public improvements. The itinerant vender has no 
such relation to your community. He is no part of your political organ- 
ism. He comes and goes ; he is not a taxpayer ; he shares in none 
of the burdens of your people ; he is a free trader, who looks upon 
your market as his, and open to him as much as to your own trades- 
people. Your city government taxes him to diminish the burdens 
borne by your own citizens. This is protection simple and pure, and 
is the exact character of that which we v/ould aj^ply to foreign 
nations seeking our markets. 

Our fathers recognized this principle. It was emphasized in the 
second act ever passed by the Congress of the United States ; indeed, 
it was the very first important legislative declaration under the Federal 
Constitution. The only other law that preceded it was that of fixing 
the oath of office of certain Federal officials. It was proposed even 
before Washington was inaugurated. It subsequently received his 
sanction, and it is a fact not without significance that his approval 
was given to it on a day memorable in American history, July 4, 
1789. It had the approval of James Madison, Rufus King, Eoger 
Sherman, Jonathan Trumbull, Richard Henry Lee, and a host of 
other leading men from all parts of the Union. 

Here is another historical fact of great interest and significance. 
Additional tariff legislation was had in 1790. Some duties were 
increased. The Journal of the House of Representatives discloses the 



346 SPEECHES AND ADDRESSES OF WILLIAM McKINLEY. 

fact that of the 39 votes given in favor of the bill, 21 were from the 
Southern States, 13 from the Middle States, and 5 from the New 
England States. Of the 13 votes cast against it, 9 were from the 
New England States, 3 from the Southern States, and 1 from the 
Middle States. It will thus be seen that we are largely indebted to 
the South for the inauguration and establishment of the protective 
system in the United States, which has for the most part governed 
our legislation since the formation of the Government. For nearly 
sixty years of our National life this principle in its fullness has been 
recognized in our laws, and whenever recognized it has been accom- 
panied by commercial and industrial development, stimulating new 
enterprises and securing prosperity to the masses without a parallel 
in the world's annals. 

The revenue-tariff periods of our history have been periods of 
greatest financial revulsions and industrial decadence, want and pov- 
erty among the people, private enterprises checked, and public works 
retarded. From 1833 to 1842, under the low-tariff legislation then 
prevailing, business was at a standstill, and our merchants and 
traders were bankrupted ; our industries were paralyzed, our labor 
remained idle, and our capital was unemployed. Foreign products 
crowded our markets, destroyed domestic competition, and, as invari- 
ably follows, the prices of commodities to consumers were appreciably 
raised. It is an instructive fact, that every panic this country has 
ever experienced has been preceded by enormous importations. 
From 1846 to 1861 a similar situation was presented under the low 
tariff of that period. 

Contrast this period with the period from 1860 to 1880, the for- 
mer under a revenue tariff, the latter under a protective tariff. In 
1860 we had 163,000,000 acres of improved land, while in 1880 we 
had 287,000,000, an increase of 75 per cent. In 1860 our farms were 
valued at 83,200,000,000. In 1880 their value had leaped to $10,- 
197,000,000, an increase of over 300 per cent. In 1860 we raised 
173,000,000 bushels of wheat; in 1880, 498,000,000. In 1860 we 
raised 838,000,000 bushels of corn ; in 1880, 1,717,000,000 bushels. 
In 1860 we produced 5,000,000 bales of cotton ; in 1880, 7,000,000 
bales, an increase of 40 per cent. In 1860 we manufactured cotton 
goods to the value of $115,681,774 ; in 1880, while selling prices had 
been greatly reduced, the value reached $211,000,000, an increase of 
more than of 80 per cent. In 1860 we manufactured of woolen goods 
$61,000,000 ; in 1880, $267,000,000, an increase of 333 per cent. In 
1860 we produced 60,000,000 pounds of wool ; in 1880, 240,000,000 



PROTECTION AND THE SOUTH. 347 

pounds, an increase of 300 per cent. In 1860 we mined 15,000,000 
tons of coal ; in 1880, 79,000,000 tons, an increase of over 400 percent. 
In 1860 we made 987,000 tons of pig iron ; in 1880, 3,835,000 tons. 
In 1860 we manufactured 235,000 tons of railroad iron, and in 1880 
1,208,000 tons. In 1860 our aggregate of National wealth was $16,- 
159,000,000 ; in 1880 it was $43,000,000,000. 

From 1848 to 1860, during the low-tariff period, there was but a 
single year in which we exported in excess of what we imported. The 
balance of trade during the twelve of the thirteen years was against 
us. Our people were drained of their money to pay for foreign pur- 
chases. We sent abroad over and above our sales 1396,216,161. This 
vast sum was draAvn from the United States, from its business, from 
the channels of trade, which would have been better employed in pro- 
ductive enterprises, and thus supplied our wants for which we were 
compelled to go abroad. During the last thirteen years, under a pro- 
tective tariff, there was but one year that the balance of trade was 
against us. For twelve years we sold to our foreign customers in ex- 
cess of what we bought from them in the sum of $1,612,659,755. 

This contrast makes an interesting exhibit of the work under the 
two systems. You need not be told that the Government and the 
people are most prosperous whose balance of trade is in their favor. 
The Government ib like the citizen — indeed, it is but an aggregation 
of citizens ; and when the citizen buys more than he sells he is soon 
conscious that his year's business has not been a success. Our wealth 
increases $875,000,000 every year, while the increase of France is 
1375,000,000 ; Great Britain, $325,000,000, and Germany, $200,000,- 
000. The total carrying capacity of all the vessels entered and cleared 
from American ports during the year 1886-'87 in the foreign trade 
was 28,000,000 tons. The amount of freight transported by the rail- 
roads of the United States was alone 482,000,000 tons for the same 
year. The sum of our industries exceeds that of any other people 
or tribe or nationality. Mulhall, the English statistician, places the 
manufactures of the United States at $11,405,000,000 annually, which 
is $2,205,000,000 greater than those of the United Kingdom of Great 
Britain, nearly twice those of France or Germany, nearly three times 
those of Russia, and almost equal to the aggregate industries of 
Austria, Italy, Spain, Belgium, Holland, Australia, Canada, and 
Sweden and Norway. 

This advancement is the world's wonder. The other nations of 
the earth can not furnish such a splendid exhibition of progress in 
any age or period. We defy a revenue-tariff policy to present such 
23 



348 SPEECHES AND ADDRESSES OF WILLIAM McKINLEY. 

an exhibition of material prosperity and industrial development. 
Arts, science, and literature have held their own in this wonderful 
march. We are prosperous to-day beyond any other people. The 
masses are better cared for, better provided for, more self-respecting, 
and more independent, than ever before in our history ; which can 
not be said of the masses of other countries. One of the striking dif- 
ferences between a revenue tariff and a protective tariff is that the 
former sends the money of its people abroad for foreign supplies, 
and seeks a foreign market. The latter keeps the money at home 
among our own people, circulating through the arteries of trade, and 
creates a market at home, which is always the best because the most 
reliable. 

My fellow-countrymen, the South has shared in this splendid 
progress, in this golden period of development. Listen to the story 
of your triumphant march : From 1851 to 1860 the average yearly 
pi'oduction of pig iron throughout the United States was less than 
800,000 tons. In 1886 the States of Alabama, Tennessee, Virginia, 
West Virginia, Kentucky, Georgia, Maryland, Texas, and North Caro- 
lina produced 875,179 net tons, or 75,000 more than the whole an- 
nual output of the United States under the free-trade period named. 
The eight years last past have brought to the South wonderful prog- 
ress. You had, in 1880, 19,435 miles of railroad; you have now 
36,737 miles, and this is increasing. You raised, in 1880, 5,755,350 
bales of cotton ; in 1887 you raised 6,800,000 bales. In 1880 you 
raised 431,074,630 bushels of grain, and in 1887 you raised 626,305,000 
bushels. In 1880 you had live stock amounting in value to $391,- 
312,254 ; it is now valued at $573,695,550. The value of your agricul- 
tural products in 1880 was $571,098,454; in 1887 it had reached 
$742,066,460. In 1880 you produced 397,301 tons of pig iron ; in 1887 
you produced 929,436 tons, and I am assured upon the best authority 
that you produce more than a million tons now. You mined, in 1880, 
6,049,471 tons of coal ; in 1887, 16,476,785 tons. You had, in 1880, 
179 cotton-mills ; you have to-day 300, and they are increasing. The 
number of your spindles in 1880 was 713,989 ; they are to-day 1,495,- 
145. The number of your looms in 1880 was 15,222 ; they are over 
34,000 now. The value of cotton goods which you produced, in 
1880, was $21,000,000 ; in 1887 it was over $43,000,000. And yet, 
in the presence of such progress, it is seriously proposed to reverse the 
policy under which it has been made. 

Surely a new era of industrial development has come to the 
South. Nothing should be permitted to check or retard it. To her, 



PROTECTION AND THE SOUTH. 349 

Nature has been most prodigal with her gifts. Her hills and valleys 
have been made the storehouses of richest treasure. Coal and iron 
mines wait impatiently the toucli of labor and capital, and tempt 
both with promise of lavish profit. Raw materials are found at every 
turn, to invite the skilled artisan to transform them into the finished 
product for the highest uses of man. She possesses the fibers in rich 
abundance ; her skilled labor should weave the fabric. It is said 
that there is nothing grown in any of the States, except Florida, that 
Georgia can not profitably produce. She has coal, iron deposits, 
marble and building stone, lumber, cotton, and the cereals. Nothing 
but her own folly, nothing but blindness to her highest and best in- 
terests, can keep her from the front rank of the industrial States of 
the Union. 

One of the chief complaints against the protective system is its 
alleged hindrance to foreign trade and a foreign market for our own 
products. It is argued that if we could import raw materials from 
other countries free, and manufacture such raw materials into prod- 
ucts for use, we could export them at great profit and thus secure a 
standing in the markets of the world. This theory is wholly, as I be- 
lieve, illusory ; it is without foundation. "We have an example of free 
raw material in a certain line of manufactures — that of leather for 
boots, shoes, etc. In 1872 hides and skins were made free, so that our 
manufacturers could import them without customhouse burdens. 
They have had " free trade " in their raw materials now for sixteen 
years. This industry has been an exceptionally successful one, and 
yet you can not avoid being surprised when I say to you that in those 
sixteen years we have been able to export but two per cent of the 
leather production of the country. 

But if free raw material be necessary to secure an export trade 
and the foreign markets, then I answer that our manufacturers to- 
day have substantial free trade in raw materials which they make into 
the finished product in the United States, provided they export it. 
Sections 3019, 3020, 3021, and 3022 of the United States Statutes pro- 
vide for the remission of duties on all foreign materials used in manu- 
facturing for the export trade. The law is positive that all articles 
manufactured for export from imported materials, upon which duties 
have been paid, shall, when exported, be entitled to a drawback of 90 
per cent of the duties paid on such raw materials. Some use has 
been made of these laws. The remission of duties in 1884 paid upon 
imported material manufactured for foreign markets amounted to 
12,256,638. On some articles the drawback is equal to the duty paid, 



/ 

V 



350 SPEECHES AND ADDRESSES OP WILLIAM McKINLEY. 

but in no instance where articles are imported to be manufactured 
here and sent abroad is the duty to exceed ten per cent. 

And yet we are gravely told by the tariff reformers that we can 
not reach foreign markets on account of the high tariff on the raw 
material, when, in fact, for foreign trade, foreign raw materials are 
practically free. This principle was recognized as early as the ad- 
ministration of George Washington, and has been enlarged and made 
applicable to all imported materials, the drawbacks varying from 
90 to 100 per cent. What becomes, then, of the cry for free raw 
materials in the presence of this fact? The truth is, we are not so 
much concerned about the foreign market as we are about the home 
market. The latter is the best, and we have not yet been able to con- 
trol it, and until we do, that should be our chief concern. But if any 
of our people are sighing for a foreign market, and value it more 
highly than our own, they can import foreign raw material practi- 
cally free of duty, and after advancing it into the higher forms of 
manufacture can go out and " possess the world's markets," if that 
be possible. Taxed raw materials do not now stand in their way, and 
it is base hypocrisy to claim that they do. 

" The markets of the world " in our present condition are a snare 
and a delusion. We will reach them whenever we can undersell com- 
peting nations, and no sooner. Our tariffs do not keep us out, and 
free trade will not make it easier to enter them. Let me give you a 
brief exhibit of some of our foreign trade, what we buy and what we 
sell. In the year ending June 30, 1887, we bought of Mexico, the 
Central American States, British Honduras, and the West Indies and 
South America, products to the value of 8172,468,526, and we sold 
these governments of our own products about 33^ per cent in amount 
of what we bought of them, or about 860,000,000 ; and, as showing 
that our protective tariff did not produce this uncomfortable balance 
against us, I need only state that more than one half of the products 
we bought were not subject to any tariff tax at all, but were admitted 
free of duty. 

Mr. President, upon what terms can we adopt a revenue-tariff 
system in this country ? In one way only — by accepting European 
conditions, and submitting to all the discomforts and disadvantages 
of our commercial rivals. The chief obstruction in the way of a 
revenue tariff is the wages paid American workingmen, and any re- 
turn to that policy involves a reduction of the cost of labor. We can 
not afford, Mr. President, to have cheap labor in the United States. 
Cheap labor means cheap men and dear money. I would rather ele- 



PROTECTION AND THE SOUTH. 35 1 

vate and improve the condition of my fellow-citizens than increase the 
value of money and the power of " money-bags." This is a Kepublic 
of free and equal citizenship. The Government is in the hands of 
the masses, and not of the few. This is our boast, and it is a proud 
one. The condition of the masses, their well-being, their intelli- 
gence, their preparation for the civil duties which rest upon them, 
depend largely upon the scale of industrial wages. It is essential, 
therefore, that the best possible wages attainable shall be secured and 
maintained. This is vital and fundamental. We can not without 
grave danger and serious disturbance — we ought not under any cir- 
cumstances — adopt a policy which would scale down the wages and 
diminish the comforts of American workingmen. Their welfare and 
independence, their progress and elevation, are closely related to 
the welfare and independence and progress of the Kepublic. We 
have no pampered class in this country, and we want none. We 
want the field kept open ; no narrowing of the avenues ; no lower- 
ing of our standard. We want no barriers raised against a higher 
and better civilization. The gateway of opportunity must be open 
to all, to the end that they may be first who deserve to be first, 
whether born in poverty or reared in luxury. We do not want the 
masses excluded from competing for the first rank among their coun- 
trymen and for the Nation's greatest honors, and we do not mean 
that they shall be. 

Free trade, or a revenue tariff, will of necessity shut them out. It 
has no respect for labor. It holds it as the mere machinery of capital. 
It would have cheai3 men that it might have cheap merchandise. 
With all its boasted love for the struggling millions, it is infinitely 
more interested in cutting down the wages of labor than in saving 
twenty-five cents on a blanket ; more intent in reducing the purchas- 
ing power of a man's labor than the cost of his coat. Things are not 
always the dearest when their price is nominally the highest. The 
price is not the only measure, but the wherewithal to buy is an essential 
factor. Few men before me but have f ^und in the course of their 
lives more than once that that which was cheapest when measured by 
mere price was the dearest when they were without money and 
employment, or when their products could find no market, or, find- 
ing it, commanded no price at all commensurate with the labor 
required to produce them. Primarily, it is labor which is interested 
most in this question of protection. The man with money can seek 
other avenues of profit and investment, or can wait for his dividends ; 
but the laborer can not wait for his dinner, and the United States 



352 SPEECHES AND ADDRESSES OP WILLIAM McKINLEY. 

does not want citizens who make Presidents, Senators, and Eepre- 
sentatives to be in a condition of dependence and destitution. That 
is not the sort of citizenship we want. 

Next to the laborer the farmer is the immediate beneficiary of the 
American system. It brings to his plantation a city of consumers. 
The farmer and the factor are brought into close proximity. The 
problem of transportation is largely eliminated. He finds a market 
not only for staple products which would bear transportation, but for 
many products which but for a home market would waste and decay 
in the fields. I need not tell a farmer in this neighborhood of the 
beneficial effects of a home market. His own experience is better 
than any philosophy. Atlanta has given him an object lesson. It 
has increased the value of his farm products and enhanced the value 
of every foot of ground he owns. 

Benjamin Franklin, writing from London, in 1771, to Humphrey 
Marshall, comprehended the situation when he said : 

Every manufacturer encouraged in our country makes part of a market for 
provisions within ourselves, and saves so much money to the country as must 
otherwise be exported to pay for the manufactures he supplies. Here in England 
it is well known and understood that wherever a manufacture is established which 
employs a number of hands, it raises the value of land in the neighboring country 
all around it ; partly by the greater demand near at hand for the produce of the 
land, and partly from the plenty of money drawn by the manufacturers to that 
part of the country. It seems therefore the interest of all our farmers and owners 
of lands to encourage our young manufactures in preference to foreign ones 
imported among us from distant countries. 

The fathers of the Republic appreciated the necessity for a home 
market. They were all farmers and planters. They could not sell to 
each other, for each supplied his own wants. This was their situation. 
They recognized the importance of diversifying the occupations of the 
people. They must promote other pursuits than the cultivation of 
the soil. They must have, if they would prosper, consumers who 
would absorb the surplus products of the farm. The result was a 
protective tariff, and under it the wisdom and foresight of the found- 
ers of the Republic have been more than vindicated. Andrew Jack- 
son put the case as well as has ever been done, when he declared, 
in 1824 : 

Where has the American farmer a market for his surplus product ? Except 
for cotton, he has neither a foreign nor a home market. Does not this clearly 
prove, when there is no market either at home or abroad, that there is too much 
labor employed in agriculture, and that the channels for labor should be multi- 
plied ? Common sense points out the remedy : Draw from agriculture the super- 



PROTECTION AND THE SOUTH. 353 

abundant labor, employ it on mechanism and manufactures, thereby creating a 
home market for your breadstuffs, and distributing labor to the most profitable 
account and benefit to the country. 

One third of the cotton crop of the South is consumed at home. 
Who would not wish that all of it might find a market in the United 
States ? We of the North would be better off ; you of the South 
would be better off. The country at large would be the gainer if the 
whole cotton crop was fabricated in our own mills by our own people. 
Transportation would to a great extent be saved. We would make 
and buy more cotton cloths at home, and send abroad for less ; idle 
labor would be employed ; idle capital find investment ; the South 
would increase its spindles and its looms, and general and permanent 
prosperity would follow. 

The tariff reformer seeks to flatter the New England manufacturer 
with the suggestion that he no longer needs protection, and should 
turn his influence in favor of free trade. He assures him that he has 
reached such perfection in manufacture, such completeness of organi- 
zation, such advancement in mechanical skill, that he has nothing to 
fear from competition abroad, and that he has but to reach out for 
our own and " the world's markets " and they are his. He assures 
him that he has nothing longer to fear from foreign competition, but 
that his serious danger is from home competition ; that while he is 
indebted for his splendid progress in industrial development to a pro- 
tective system, he has outgrown it, and if it is to be continued, the 
people of the South and West will become his dangerous rivals ; and 
that, to avoid this new competition, he invites him to assist in with- 
holding from the States which have been slower in industrial devel- 
opment that measure of legislative aid which has been so profitably 
invoked by the New England States, and to which they are indebted 
for their wonderful advancement in mechanical and industrial pur- 
suits. What do the South and the West say to this narrow and pro- 
vincial view ? It may be true that the New England manufacturer 
has reached that rank and that degree of ]. erfection when protection 
to him is not so essential as it once was, but the West and the South 
are in exactly the same condition that New England was thirty years 
ago, and I am sure will insist that the same fostering legislation shall 
be accorded for their development that has been so long enjoyed by 
their more progressive fellow-citizens on the Eastern coast. The 
truth is, protection must be universal in its application — equally 
within the reach of all sections and all industries, or it should be 
abandoned altogether. It can not be enjoyed by one interest to the 



354 SPEECHES AND ADDRESSES OF WILLIAM McKINLEY. 

exclusion of another. The New England woolen mills can not de- 
mand protection upon their cloth and deny it to wool, and they do 
not. The rice planter can not hope to enjoy full protection against 
foreign competition and deny equal protection to the producer of 
salt. The sugar planter of Louisiana can not invoke the power of 
Congress for protective duties and yet deny like protection to indus- 
tries in other parts of the country. The system must stand as a 
whole, or fall. As Burke said of liberty, " It is the clear right of all, 
or of none. It is only perfect when universal." It must be j)rotect- 
ive tariff for all interests requiring the encouragement of the Govern- 
ment, or it must be free trade or a revenue tariff, and rest alike upon 
all classes and all portions of the country. 

Mr. President, we are different from any other nation, and it is 
that difference which makes us the best of all nations. Our political 
system rests upon a principle different from that of any other. It is 
founded upon the consent of the people. If we had wanted it other- 
wise we would not have left home, but would have remained the 
obedient child of an imperious parent. We would not have turned 
away from the mother country. We would have remained one of her 
dependencies. We would not have fought our way through blood 
and sacrifice to independence. We separated to set up for ourselves 
a free and independent political society, and that policy is the best 
for us which best subserves the purposes of our organization, our 
citizenship and civilization. It is ours to work out our own destiny, 
and in doing so furnish an example of a free and progressive people, 
whose industrial policy has made it possible to satisfy the best and 
highest aspirations of men, and which closes no field to human en- 
deavor. We would wish for all mankind, for all the nations and peo- 
ples of earth, the beneficence of our system and the opportunities 
which it presents. We bid them level their condition up to ours ; 
we will not level ours down to theirs. We Avill remove all restrictions 
from international trade, as we have removed all restrictions from in- 
terstate trade, whenever they will raise their labor and their condi- 
tions to our standard. 

Men of Georgia, upon this great industrial question there should 
be no North nor South. To us of every section have been intrusted 
the interests of our country — our whole country. To others have 
been confided the care of other nations and other peoples. We will 
not interfere with them ; we bid them not interfere with us. My 
fellow-citizens, in this conflict, influenced by patriotism, National in- 
terest, and National pride, let us be Americans. 



THE SENATE TAKIFF BILL. 

Speech in the House of Kepresentatives, Fiftieth 
Congress, January 26, 1889. 

[From the Congressional Record.'] 

The question before the House being on the concurrence to Senate amend- 
ments to the bill (H. R. 9,501) to reduce taxation and simplify the laws in rela- 
tion to the collection of the revenue, Mr, McKinley said — 

Mr. Speaker : The question of whether we are to have any 
revenue legislation before the close of the present Congress will de- 
pend for its answer very much upon the action that is taken by the 
House of Kepresentatives to-day upon the suggestion of my colleague 
on the Committee on Ways and Means, the gentleman from Maine 
[Mr. Keed]. Everybody knows, Mr. Speaker, that if this bill with 
the Senate amendments goes to the Committee on Ways and Means, 
no practical legislation will be had at this session of Congress, and 
the great question of the reduction of the revenues of the Govern- 
ment, now so excessive, as claimed by the gentleman from Texas 
[Mr. Mills], will continue unsettled, and nothing can be done for 
nearly eleven months, or until we assemble in regular session next 
December, and at best we can not hope for revenue legislation before 
the spring or summer of 1890, So that at this very point this House 
will determine whether we are to have any reduction of the revenues, 
and whether excessive collections are to continue for twelve or four- 
teen months in the future. 

The Senate of the United States, a co-ordinate branch of Congress, 
has respectfully asked this House to agree to a Committee of Con- 
ference, Their purpose is manifest — it is, to bring the two Houses 
closer together and make an agreement possible, I believe that but 
once in the history of our century of legislation has a similar request 
been refused — and refused, I believe, under a ruling of the present 
Speaker of the House of Eepresentatives, because the request was not 



356 SPEECHES AND ADDRESSES OF WILLIAM McKINLEY. 

made at that stage of disagreement between the two Houses when a 
conference was justified. We are confronted this morning with this 
request for consultation and conference. It is not a question of 
high tariff ; it is not a question of low tariff ; but it is a question of 
whether the House of Eepresentatives will meet the Senate of the 
United States in free and open conference and determine if their 
differences can be adjusted and their disagreements reconciled. 

The House has given to the country one bill framed upon one 
princi})le and based upon the line of party policy with which the 
majority is in accord. The Senate has given to the country another 
bill resting upon an entirely different principle and following out an 
entirely different line of public and party policy. The Senate has 
asked the House to consent to a Committee of Conference to con- 
sider the disagreement so presented, that they may see if in some 
manner this great difference between the two Houses can not be 
reconciled. Now, what do we want to do as practical men ? What 
does the country expect of us ? We want to reduce the public reve- 
nues, and we can reduce them, without my friend from Texas [Mr. 
Mills] being called upon to surrender one jot of his free-trade prin- 
ciples or this side surrendering one jot of its protection principles. 
n the House of Representatives meets the Senate in free and open 
conference and those provisions are adopted where the two bills meet 
on common ground, we can reduce the revenues from 835,000,000 to 
$40,000,000 and still preserve for future settlement the general policy 
of taxation respectively adhered to by the two parties. 

All we have to do, Mr. Speaker, is to take up these two bills and 
look at the duties and changes in rates which are common to both. 
First, the abolition of the tax upon tobacco — $30,000,000 ; that is 
common to both bills. Then you take the free list ; that is common 
to both bills. Then you take the administrative features of both 
bills. Both seek the same purpose ; both look to an honest collection 
of the revenue and an honest administration of the customs laws ; 
and if a Committee of Conference that we might appoint here this 
morning would only occupy the common ground, common to both 
bills, not even enter the field of division or controversy, we would 
strike down from $35,000,000 to $40,000,000 of revenue that is being 
collected, and which the administration has repeatedly declared, if 
continued, will put in peril the business of the country. This House 
has already spoken upon the subject and expressed its approval of 
one subject of reduction. It was only the other day that it mani- 
fested its desire to have the tax taken from tobacco when it refused 



THE SENATE TARIFF BILL. 357 

to send a bill of that imjDort to the Committee on Ways and Means, 
but sent it to another Committee, because it believed that Committee 
would give to the majority of this House an opportunity to vote its 
sentiments and register its will in public law. [Applause on the 
Eepublican side.] 

This administrative bill has nothing to do with politics ; it has 
nothing to do with free trade ; it has nothing to do with protection ; 
it has nothing to do with party principles or policies. It is above 
politics and should be divorced from party. But it has everything 
to do with an honest administration of the customs laws, whether 
they are based upon the principle of protection or upon the principle 
of free trade. Now, why not, as practical men, seeking to relieve the 
Treasury of the United States of its congestion, as described by the 
President of the United States, meet this condition and relieve the 
Treasury of its accumulating surplus, and leave this vast sum of 
money with the people, where it belongs ? " It is not a theory ; it 
is a condition." Shall we run away from the condition which we 
can in part relieve, or waste our valuable time now upon theory? 
Shall we reduce the revenues of the Government ? "VVe have an op- 
portunity to do it, and to move in that direction this morning; but 
if this bill goes to the Committee on Ways and Means, mark my 
word, there will bo no practical legislation reached at this session of 
Congress. And I beg the gentlemen on that side of the House, and 
gentlemen on this side of the House, to signalize the close of this 
Democratic Congress with some practicable, sensible, patriotic legis- 
lation. [Loud applause on the Republican side.] 



THE AMEEICAN VOLUNTEEK SOLDIEK. 

Address at the Metropolitan Opera House, New York 

City, May 30, 1889. 

[From the New York Sun.] 

Mr. President and Comrades of the Grand Army of 
THE Republic, and my Fellow-Citizens : The Grand Army of the 
Republic is on duty to-day. But not in the service of arms. The 
storm and siege and bivouac and battle line have given place to the 
ministrations of peace and the manifestations of affectionate regard 
for fallen comrades, in which the great body of the people cheerfully 
and reverently unite. The service of the day is more to us — far more 
to us — than to those in whose memory it is performed. It means 
nothing to the dead, everything to the living. It reminds us of what 
our stricken comrades did and sacrificed and won. It teaches us the 
awful cost of liberty and the price of National unity, and bids us 
guard with sacred and sleepless vigilance the great and immortal 
work which they wrought. [Applause.] 

The annual tribute which this Nation brings to its heroic dead is, 
in part at least, due to American thought and conception, creditable 
to the living and honorable to the dead. No nation in the world has 
so honored her heroic dead as ours. The soldiery of no country in 
the world have been crowned with such immortal meed or received at 
the hands of the people such substantial evidences of National regard. 
Other nations have decorated their great captains and have knighted 
their illustrious commanders. Monuments have been erected to per- 
petuate their names. Permanent and triumphal arches have been 
raised to mark their graves. Nothing has been omitted to mani- 
fest and make immortal their valorous deeds. But to America is 
mankind indebted for the loving and touching tribute this day per- 
formed, which brings the offerings of affection and tokens of love to 
the graves of all our soldier dead. [Applause.] We not only honor 
our great captains and illustrious commanders, the men who led the 



THE AMERICAN VOLUNTEER SOLDIER. 359 

vast armies to battle, but we shower equal honors in equal measure 
upon all, irrespective of rank in battle or condition at home. [Ap- 
plause.] Our gratitude is of that grand patriotic character which 
recognizes no titles, permits no discrimination, subordinates all dis- 
tinctions ; and the soldier, whether of the rank and file, the line or 
the staff, who fought and fell for Liberty and Union — all who fought 
in the great cause and have since died, are warmly cherished in the 
hearts and are sacred to the memory of the people. [Great ap- 
plause.] 

Mr. President, from the very commencement of our Civil War we 
recognized the elevated patriotism of the rank and file of the army 
and their unselfish consecration to the country, while subsequent 
years have only served to increase our admiration for their splendid 
and heroic services. They enlisted in the army with no expectation 
of promotion ; not for the paltry pittance of pay ; not for fame or 
popular applause, for their services, however efficient, were not to be 
heralded abroad. They entered the army moved by the highest and 
purest motives of patriotism, that no harm might befall the Republic. 
While detracting nothing from the fame of our matchless leaders, we 
know that without that great army of volunteers, the citizen soldiery, 
the brilliant achievements of the war would not have been possible. 
[Applause.] They, my fellow-citizens, were the great power. They 
were the majestic and irresistible force. They stood behind the 
strategic commanders, whose intelligent and individual earnestness, 
guided by their genius, gained the imperishable victories of the war. 
I would not withhold the most generous eulogy from conspicuous sol- 
diers, living or dead — from the leaders Grant, Sherman, Sheridan, 
Thomas, Meade, Hancock, McClellan, Hooker, and Logan — who flame 
out the very incarnation of soldierly valor and vigor before the eyes 
of the American people, and have an exalted rank in history, and fill 
a great place in the hearts of their countrymen. [Apj^lause.] We 
need not fear, my fellow-citizens, that the great captains will be for- 
gotten. No retrospect of the war can be had, no history of the war 
can be written, which shall omit the nam-j of the gallant Sheridan, 
he who made the scene of Stonewall Jackson's stronghold in the 
Shenandoah Valley a field of glory [applause] ; and no contemplation 
of the war can be had that shall pass unnoticed the name of the illus- 
trious Hancock [applause], whose brilliant achievements at Gettys- 
burg and upon other noted fields have covered him with imperishable 
fame. [Applause.] And, my fellow-citizens, no history of this war 
will ever be written which will omit the name of the glorious Sher- 



360 SPEECHES AND ADDRESSES OP WILLIAM McKINLEY. 

man [applause], that grand old soldier who delved into the moun- 
tains at Chattanooga and came out gloriously triumphant at the sea. 
[Thunders of applause.] Nor can we ever forget that majestic tri- 
umvirate who commanded the grand military divisions of the grand- 
est army of the world [applause], and Grant, monument or no monu- 
ment [applause] — Grant will be remembered forever. [Cheers.] That 
silent, sturdy soldier who closed his lips on the word victory at the 
Wilderness and refused to speak, but fought it out on that line 
until the final grand surrender at Appomattox. [Applause.] No 
retrospect of that war can be had which shall omit the names of 
the gallant naval officers who contributed such distinguished services 
[applause]— Porter, Dahlgren, Dupont, Foote, Ammen, Eowan ; and 

" While old Ocean's breast bears a white sail, 
And God's soft stars at rest guide through the gale, 
Men will ne'er thy name forget, heart of oak, 
Farragut, Farragut, Thunderbolt's stroke ! " 

But the fame of these men, in which the Nation has so just a 
pride, and whose names are indissolobly associated with that great 
conflict, is, after all, but the reflection of the patience, and the cour- 
ap-e, and the heroism, and the sacrifices of the rank and file of the 
army. [Applause.] Of general and soldier it can be said : " Their 
fame is one and indivisible, and that you can not disunite the glory 
of their deeds ; and while the private soldier bore no insignia of rank 
upon the outside, his blue blouse bore a heart within." [Applause.] 

My friends, we had a million soldiers in the field when the war 
terminated, and the highest testimony to their character is found in 
the fact that when the muster hour came, and that vast army, which 
for years had been accustomed to wars and carnage, returned to their 
homes, they dropped into the quiet walks of citizenship, and no trace 
of them was ever discernible except in their integrity of character, 
their intense patriotism, and their participation in the growth and 
development and maintenance of the Government which they had 
contributed so much to save. [Applause.] 

" What became of these battalions 

When the victory was won ? 
Let me point you to a picture ! 

See a million soldiers there 
Flushed with triumph, and with weapons 

Flashing keen and bright and bare. 
Vanished. Wondrous transformation I 

Where is now that mighty band? 



THE AMERICAN VOLUNTEER SOLDIER. 361 

Do they roam, a vast banditti, 

Pillaging their native land ? 
No. We point to field and workshop : 

Let the world the moral see ! 
There beneath the dust of labor 

Toil the veteran soldiery. 
Ye who were mightiest in the battle 

On the mountain and the plain, 
Wrought, yes, wrought your greatest triumph 

When ye sought your homes again — 
Sought your homes 'mid peace and quiet, 

Grasping with your strong right hand 
Implements of honest labor. 

Toiling to upbuild the land." 

My fellow-citizens, the rank and file of the old Regular Army 
was made of the same heroic mold as our Volunteer Army. It is 
a recorded fact in history, that when treason swept over this coun- 
try in 1861 — when distinguished officers, who had been educated at 
the public expense, who had taken the oath to support the Consti- 
tution of the United States and defend this Government against all 
its enemies, when they proved recreant to trust and duty, and en- 
listed under the banner of the Confederacy — the rank and file of that 
Old Army stood steadfast to Federal authority, loyal to the Federal 
Government, and no private soldier followed his old commander into 
the ranks of the enemy. [Applause.] None were false to conscience 
or to country. None turned their backs on the old flag. [Applause.] 

The most splendid exhibition of devotion to country and to the 
Government and the flag was displayed also by our prisoners of war. 
We had 175,000 soldiers taken prisoners during the Civil War ; and 
when death was stalking within the walls of their prisons, when 
starvation was almost overcoming their brave hearts, when mind 
was receding and reason was tottering, liberty was offered to those 
175,000 men upon one condition — that they would swear allegiance 
to the Confederate Government and enlist in the cause of the Con- 
federacy. What was the answer of our brave but starving comrades ? 
[Voices, " No ! "] There could be but one answer. They preferred 
to suffer all and to bear all rather than prove false to the cause they 
had sworn to defend. [Applause.] 

Now, so far removed from the great war, we are prone to forget 
its disasters and underestimate its sacrifices. Their magnitude is 
best appreciated when contrasted with the losses and sacrifices of 
other armies in other times. There were slain in the late war nearly 



362 SPEECHES AND ADDRESSES OP WILLIAM McKINLEY. 

6,000 commanding officers and over 90,000 enlisted men, and 207,000 
died of disease and from exposure, making a grand total of 303,000 
men. In the War of the Revolution between the United States 
and Great Britain, excluding those captured at Yorktown and Sara- 
toga, the whole number of men killed and wounded and captured of 
the combined British and American forces was less than 22,000. We 
witnessed that loss in a single battle in a single day in the great Civil 
War. From 1775 to 1861, including all the foreign wars in which 
we were engaged, and all our domestic disturbances, covering a period 
of nearly twenty-four years, we lost but ten general officers, while in 
the four and a half years of the late war we lost one hundred and 
twenty-five. 

Massena, the French marshal at Zurich, in 1799, when he defeated 
General Korsakoff, the Russian, lost but eight per cent of his forces, 
while bloody Shiloh yielded up more than thirty per cent. Bona- 
parte, in the famous battle of Marengo, which was an awful disaster 
in the morning and a splendid victory in the evening, lost but 4,000 
of his forces, while the heights of Gettysburg yielded up twenty-eight 
per cent of a loss to our forces, or a total of 23,000 brave men. Wel- 
lingington, at Waterloo, lost but fifteen per cent of his forces, and in 
the bloody Wilderness we lost thirty-one per cent. Napoleon, at 
Austerlitz, lost ten per cent of his forces, and our sacrificial loss at 
Antietam and at Murfreesboro was twenty-nine per cent. 

" How they went forth to die ! 
Pale, earnest thousands from the busy mills, 
And sunbrowned thousands from the harvest hills, 
Quick, eager thousands from the city streets, 
And storm-tossed from the fishers' fleets — 
How they went forth to die ! " 

My fellow-citizens, we counted no cost when the war commenced. 
We knew little of the great sacrifices which were to come or thej 
scope and extent of that great war ; we only knew that the Union 
was threatened with overthrow ; we only knew that the Nation of 
our fathers was in danger by the hand of treason. And that alone 
made the liberty-loving people indifferent to cost and consequences, 
caring nothing but to smite the hand which would seize our priceless 
inheritance, and scorning all other considerations that they might 
preserve to mankind the best Government in the world. It was then 
that the genius of self-government asserted itself, and the whole 
North was turned into a camp for muster and military instruction. 
The citizens voluntarily came together to join an army bound to- 



THE AMERICAN VOLUNTEER SOLDIER. 363 

getlier in a common cause for a common purpose — the preservation 
of the Union. It was an awful experience for the American boy, 
who knew nothing of war, in many instances, save as he had read of 
it in the glamour of history, and who in many cases had never so 
much as seen a company of armed men. Unused to hardships, 
unaccustomed to toil, undrilled in the tactics of war, with a mother's 
blessing and a father's affectionate farewell, he went forth with firm 
resolve to give up all, even the last drop of his life's blood, that this 
Nation should be saved. 

And, my fellow-citizens, we not only knew little of the scope and 
proportions of that great war, or the dreadful sacrifice to be incurred, 
but as little knew the great results which were to follow. We thought 
at the beginning, and we thought long after the commencement of 
the war, that the Union to be saved was the Union as it was. That 
was our understanding when we enlisted, that it was the Constitution 
and the Union — the Constitution as it was and the Union as it was — 
for which we fought, little heeding the teachings of history, that 
wars and revolutions can not fix in advance the boundaries of 
their influence or determine the scope of their power. History en- 
forces no sterner lesson. Our own Revolution of 1776 produced re- 
sults unlooked for by its foremost leaders. Separation was no part of 
the original purpose. Political alienation was no part of the first 
plan. Disunion was neither thought of nor accepted. Why, in 1775, 
on the 5tli day of July, in Philadelphia, when the Continental Con- 
gress was in session declaring its purposes toward Great Britain, what 
did it say ? After declaring that it would raise armies, it closed that 
declaration with this significant language : 

Lest this declaration should disquiet the minds of some of our friends and 
fellow-subjects in other parts of the Empire, we assure them that we do not mean 
to dissolve the union which has so long and happily subsisted between us. 

Our fathers said in that same declaration : 

We have not raised armies with ambitious designs to separate from Great 
Britain and establish independent States. 

Those were the views of the fathers. Those were the views enter- 
tained by the soldiers and statesmen of colonial days. Why, even the 
Declaration of Independence, which has sounded the voice of liberty 
to all mankind, was a shock to some of the colonists. The cautious 
and conservative, while believing in its eternal truth, doubted its wis- 
dom and its policy. It was in advance of the thought of .the great 
body of the people. Yet it stirred a feeling for independence, and an 
aspiration for self-government, which made a Republic tliat has now 
24 



364 SPEECHES AND ADDRESSES OP WILLIAM McKINLEY. 

lived more than a century ; and only a few days ago you were per- 
mitted to celebrate the centennial inauguration in this city of its first 
great President. [Applause.] Out of all that came a Eepublic that 
stands for human rights and human destiny, which to-day represents 
more than any other Government the glorious future of the human 
race. [Applause.] 

Our own Civil War produced results unlocked for on either side. 
The South engaged in it to destroy the Union, that it might perpetu- 
ate its peculiar institution of slavery. It happily accomplished neither 
the one nor the other. [Applause.] What was the purpose of the 
North ? I will give you its official purpose. On July 22, 1861, Con- 
gress adopted a resolution declaring the determination and the pur- 
pose of the American people. What was it ? I quote its exact lan- 
guage : " To defend the Constitution of the United States and pre- 
serve the Union." How? I again quote: "With all the rights" — 
slavery and all — " of the slave States unimpaired." That resolution 
passed the House with but two dissenting votes. It passed the Senate 
unanimously. You know that Lincoln was in the habit of saying 
he would save the Union with slavery, or he would save it without 
slavery, or he would save it part slave and part free. There you 
have the resolution of Congress and you have the statement of the 
President. These are the official manifestoes. This was the legisla- 
tive and executive will ; and as soon as these objects were accom- 
plished the war must cease. 

That was the boundary of human vision. That was the chalk- 
line of human purpose. That was the official determination. But it 
could not be so. The results overleaped the resolution and overleaped 
the statement of the President, and brought emancipation to 4,000,- 

000 men [applause], and placed in the Constitution of the United 
States, where it had never been before, and where, under God, it shall 
stand forever [applause], civil and political equality to every citizen 
everywhere within the jurisdiction of the Government. That was 
not the outcome looked for in the beginning. That was not the ex- 
pectation of the early volunteers. That was not the expectation of 
the Congress, or the President and his Cabinet. Man's purposes 
were overruled, but not from man came the issue : " From Him who 
is the Sovereign of soul and life came our order of battle, that He 
might be God and that man might be free." 

My friends and fellow-citizens, the settlements of that war — and 

1 speak for my comrades of the Grand Army of the Republic — the 
settlements of that war must stand as the irreversible judgment of 



THE AMERICAN VOLUNTEER SOLDIER. 365 

battle and the inflexible decree of a Nation of free men. [Applause.] 
They must not be misinterpreted, they must not be nullified, they 
must not be weakened or shorn of their force under any pretext 
whatever, but must be acquiesced in freely in every part of the Ee- 
public, without reservation or voidance or evasion. [Applause.] It 
must not be equality and justice in the written law only. It must be 
equality and justice in the law's administration everywhere, and alike 
administered in every part of the Republic to every citizen thereof. 
It must not be the mere cold formality of constitutional enactment. 
It must be a living birthright, which the poorest and the humblest 
may enjoy, and which the richest and most powerful dare not deny. 
[Applause.] 

Our black allies must neither be deserted nor forsaken. [Ap- 
j)lause.] And every right secured them by the Constitution must be 
as surely given to them as though God had put ujion their faces 
the color of the Anglo-Saxon race. [Applause.] They fought for 
the flag in the war, and that flag, with all it represents and stands for, 
must secure them every constitutional right in peace. [Applause.] 
At Baton Eouge the first regiment of the Black Brigade, before 
starting for Port Hudson, received at the hands of its white colonel — 
Colonel Stafford — its regimental colors in a speech from the colonel, 
which ended with this injunction : 

" Color-bearer, guard, defend, protect, die for, but do not sur- 
render these colors." [Applause.] 

To which the sergeant replied — and he was as black as my coat : 

" Colonel, I'll return those flags to you in honor, or I'll report to 
God the reason why." 

He fell mortally wounded in one of those desperate charges in 
front of Port Hudson, with his face to the enemy, with those colors 
in his clinched fist pressed upon his breast. He did not return the 
colors, but the God above him knew the reason why. [Applause.] 

Against those who fought on the other side in that great conflict 
we have no resentment ; for them we have no bitterness. We would 
impose upon them no punishment ; we would inflict upon them no 
indignity. They are our brothers. We would save them even from 
humiliation. [Applause.] But I will tell you what Ave insist upon, 
and we will insist upon it until it is secured — that the settlement 
made between Grant and Lee at Appomattox, which was afterward 
embodied in the Constitution of the United States, shall be obeyed 
and respected in every part of this Union. [Applause.] More we 
have never asked, less we will not have. [Applause. A voice, '' That's 



366 SPEECHES AND ADDRESSES OF WILLIAM McKINLEY. 

right."] Beyond that step we have never advanced, short of it we 
can not stop. Justice and righteousness plant us tliere ; and " Right 
is might and truth is God" [applause] ; and we might just as well 
remember now that God puts no nation in supreme place that will not 
do supreme work [applause] ; and God keeps no nation in supreme 
place which will not meet the supreme duty of the hour. 

" From the war's dread fiery ordeal 

No bitter hates we bring, 
No threat of wild revenges, 

No cruel taunts to fling ; 
But we must not prove faithless 

To the gallant blood they shed ; 
Our foes are all forgiven. 

But ne'er forgot our dead. 

" boys, who fell at Shiloh, 

At Richmond and Bull Run, 
The work your brave hands finished 

Shall never be undone. 
Sleep sweetly through the ages, 

O dear and gallant dust! 
The men who guard your victories 

Stand faithful to their trust." 

Comrades of the Grand Army of the Republic, those were brave 
men whose graves we decorated to-day. No less brave were those 
whose chambers of repose are beneath the scarlet fields in distant 
States. We may say of all of them as was said of the Knights of St. 
John in the Holy Wars : " In the forefront of every battle was seen 
their burnished mail, and in the gloomy rear of every retreat was 
heard their voice of conscience and of courage." " It is not," said 
Mr. Lincoln, " what we say of them, but what they did, which will 
live." They have written their own histories, they have builded their 
own monuments. No poor words of mine can enhance the glory of 
their deeds, or add a laurel to their fame. Liberty owes them a debt 
which centuries of tribute and mountains of granite adorned by the 
master hands of art can never repay. And so long as liberty lasts 
and the love of liberty has a place in the hearts of men, they will be 
safe against the tooth of time and the fate of oblivion. 

The Nation is full of the graves of the dead. You have but a 
small fraction of them here in New York, although you contributed 
one tenth of all the dead, one tenth of all the dying, one tenth of all 
the prisoners, one tenth of all the sacrifices in that great conflict. 
You have but a small number here ; the greater number sleep in dis- 



THE AMERICAN VOLUNTEER SOLDIER. 367 

tant States, thousands and tens of thousands of them of whom there 
is no record. We only know that fighting for freedom and union 
they fell, and that the place where they fell was their sepulchre. The 
Omniscient One alone knows who they are and whence they came. 
But when their immortal names are called from their silent muster, 
when their names are spoken, the answer will come back, as it was the 
custom for many years in one of the French regiments when the name 
of De la Tour d'Auvergne was called the answer came back, " Died on 
the field of honor." America has volumes of muster rolls containing 
just such a record. 

Mr. President and comrades of the Grand Army of the Eepublic, 
our circle is narrowing with the passing years. Every annual roll-call 
discloses one and another not present, but accounted for. There is a 
muster roll over yonder as well as a muster roll here. The majority 
of that vast army are fast joining their old commanders who have 
preceded them on that other shore. 

" They are gone who seemed so great — 

Gone ! but nothing can bereave them 
Of the force they made their own 

Being here ; and we believe them 
Something far advanced in state, 

And that they wear a truer crown 
Than any wreath that man can weave them. 

Speak no more of their renown, 
And in the vast cathedral leave them. 
God accept them ; Christ receive them." 



PROTECTION AND EEYENUE. 

A Campaign Speech at Music Hall, Cleveland, Ohio, 

October 5, 1889. 

[From the Cleveland Leader.'] 

Mr. President and my Fellow-Citizens : Political parties 
are indispensable to popular government. Except in the election of 
the first President of the United States we have always had political 
parties, under various designations. They have not always been 
under the same name, but save in the election of Washington we 
have always had two or more great political organizations. In the 
days of the Revolution we had Whigs and Tories, the former stand- 
ing for the independence of the colonies and the latter for their 
dependence upon Great Britain. Subsequently we had the Federal 
party and the Anti-Federal or Republican-Democratic party, with the 
two names frequently united, though at first the former alone was 
used ; then the Democratic, the Whig, the Free Soil, the Liberty, and 
Anti-Slavery parties ; and now, since 1855, we have had, as the two 
leading parties of the country, the Republican and the Democratic. 

It is a fact worthy to be noted that the very principles for which 
we are contending to-day, the identical policies and theories of gov- 
ernment which divide the two chief political organizations now, have 
in some form or other always divided the political parties of the 
country since the formation of the Federal Government. There has 
always been in the United States a political party that favored a 
strict construction of the Constitution of the United States, that 
stood in opposition to internal improvements and to a protective 
tariff, that believed in class and caste and obstruction ; and there has 
always been, on the other hand, a party that stood for the largest 
liberty, for the full development of the country, for the improvement 
of the great National water ways of the United States, and for the 
maintenance of a protective tariff and the widest opportunities for 
American aspiration ; and to-day, I repeat, that the two political 



PROTECTION AND REVENUE. 3G9 

parties now contending for public confidence, now contesting for 
political control, are divided substantially on the same issues that 
separated the j^arties of the fathers all through the first century of 
the Ee]3ublic. If Madison and Hamilton, Clay and Webster stood 
for a system of taxation that would bear most lightly upon the peo- 
ple, and least retard our industrial development, so the Eepublican 
party stands to day for precisely the same system, insisting that it 
shall stand and remain on the statute-books of our country. [Ap- 
plause.] If Lincoln and Chase, Giddings and Wade contended for 
the freedom of man, the Republican party which they founded is 
to-day contending for that without which the freedom they secured 
would not be worth possessing. So we are battling this year, as we 
battled last, for the maintenance of those great principles upon which 
depend the liberty of the citizen and the prosperity of the people. 

Taxation is necessary to any government. You can not form a 
municipality, you can not organize a county, you can not create a 
State, you can not form any government, without having to meet 
at the very threshold the question of how the money is to be 
raised to pay the current expenses imposed by such government. So 
I propose to talk to you for a little while, at the beginning of my 
address, uj^ion this subject of taxation. We can not get along with- 
out taxation. It requires about a million dollars every twenty-four 
hours to carry on the operations of the General Government. This 
money must be raised from some source. The Government can not 
create it, for, great as the Government is, it can not make values out 
of nothing. It would not do to raise this large sum of money by 
direct taxation, for direct taxation is unpojDular with the people, and 
has never been submitted to by the citizens of this country except in 
the presence of a great National emergency ; so we must find some 
other system for raising this nearly $350,000,000 annually, required 
for public purposes. We must raise it by some other system than 
that of taxing ourselves, our lands, our incomes and our professions. 
Hence both political parties of the country have come to agree that 
the bulk of this vast sum of money must be raised by what is com- 
monly called the tariff — that is, taxing the products of other coun- 
tries rather than by a direct system of taxing our own products ; 
taxing the merchandise of other countries that is seeking a market 
here rather than taxing the domestic products that are made or 
grown here. Up to that point the two great parties of the country 
are in substantial accord, but at that point they diverge, the Demo- 
cratic party insisting, as it has ever insisted as a National party, that 



370 SPEECHES AND ADDRESSES OF WILLIAM McKINLEY. 

this annual outlay, this vast sum of money required for governmental 
purposes, shall be raised by what is known as a revenue tariff and 
under a revenue-tariff system ; while the Eepublican party insists 
that this large sum of money shall be raised under what is commonly 
known as the protective system. It is here that the two political par- 
ties of the country divide. It is here that the people of this country 
are called upon to give judgment between them ; and to give intelH- 
gent judgment upon this question it is necessary that we should 
rightly understand what constitutes a revenue tariff, and exactly 
what is meant by a protective tariff. 

Now, a revenue tariff, as the very term implies, is a tariff for 
revenue only, a tariff which has no purpose, no object, no end in view, 
except putting money into the Treasury for public purposes. It is 
a tariff that dismisses and discards every consideration save the single 
one of putting money into the Federal Treasury. A protective tariff 
not only looks to the question of revenue, not only has that in view, 
but while raising revenue it has consideration for the occupations of 
our own people. It has concern for our agricultural and mechanical 
development. In a word, it looks to the imposition of duties upon 
those foreign productions that will fall most lightly upon our own 
people and least retard the progress of the country. The one has the 
single purpose of raising revenue, the other has the double purpose 
of revenue and protection — support of our Government, and defense 
of our interests a*gainst the competing industries of other countries. 

Now, you will readily see that to raise the amount of revenue we 
need from the smallest rate of duty, you would first impose your tariffs 
upon the foreign products which are most imported into the United 
States, for a revenue tariff rests upon importation — large importations. 
Every cargo, every invoice, every importation that comes into the 
United States puts money into the Federal Treasury. But you can 
not raise all the money required for public purposes by putting your 
duty upon a noncompeting foreign product, and so the advocates of a 
revenue tariff say that you must then adjust your duty upon the com- 
peting foreign product, but you must make it so low as to invite im- 
portations of such competing product, and you must make the duty so 
low as to encourage the American people to buy the foreign product 
rather than to buy the domestic product ; you must make it so low 
that in the judgment of the American people, however much they 
may be mistaken, it is more profitable for them to go abroad and buy 
than to buy the goods that are produced in the United States. In 
making the duty low for that purpose you have the very perfection 



PROTECTION AND REVENUE. 371 

and consummation of a revenue tariff. If that duty in any way 
favors or encourages American producers ; if it in any way protects 
our own people in their productions against foreign productions, then 
it ceases to be a revenue tariff and becomes a protective tariff, and 
" where protection begins, then," in the language of the political 
economists, " revenue ends." So if you find, when you have adjusted 
your revenue tariff, that it is too high, that it in fact gives encourage- 
ment to American producers, the advocates of the revenue tariff say, 
" Put it down " ; " Make it lower " ; " Bring it down so that it gives 
no protection, no favor, no discrimination to our own producers." If 
you fail to do that, then you do not secure the largest amount of 
money or revenue from the smallest rate of duty. Your duty must 
be low enough to increase importations of the foreign competing 
product. It must be low enough to diminish production at home 
and increase the demand for foreign production ; and you can readily 
see that every increase of importation of- the foreign competing prod- 
uct diminishes by just so much the American product. Every time 
you bring the competing product into the United States it takes the 
place of a like quantity of the American product. The revenue 
tariff cares nothing for that. This tariff is to secure revenue, and 
must be put low enough to diminish the demand for domestic pro- 
duction and increase the demand for foreign production. But while 
you are putting ample money into the Federal Treasury by a tariff 
as low as that ; while you are increasing the flow of revenue into 
the National Treasury, you are diminishing the money in the pock- 
ets of our people, you are diminishing our own production, you are 
diminishing the demand for American labor ; for every cargo, every 
invoice, every importation from foreign countries, of a product that 
competes with what we make in the United States, displaces just so 
much of American production, and to that extent deprives the Amer- 
ican workingmen of what justly belongs to them. [Applause.] 

Now, if you want that to occur, then you want a revenue tariff. 
If you want increased foreign productions, then put your revenue 
tariff upon such foreign products and you will have them. You will 
have ample revenue, you will have an overflowing Treasury, but while 
you are securing an overflowing Treasury you are bankrupting our 
own industries, destroying our own investments, and depriving 
American workingmen of the labor which belongs to them. [Ap- 
plause.] But there is a time when revenue ceases to overflow in the 
Treasury from a revenue-tariff system. After you have impoverished 
our own people — after you have destroyed our own industries — then 



372 SPEECHES AND ADDRESSES OP WILLIAM McKINLEY. 

our people become so poor that they can not import, and the revenues 
fall off. Even under a revenue- tariff system, as was the case in 1860, 
at the close of the revenue-tariff period under the very perfection of 
a revenue-tariff system, the revenues had so fallen off that the Gov- 
ernment had to go into the markets of the world to borrow money to 
pay the ordinary expenses of the Government. 

A protective tariff not only looks to the question of revenue, 
but it has the patriotic motive of taking care of our own people. It 
says, " Let everything come into the United States free of duty 
which we can not produce or manufacture ourselves." A few years 
after the close of the war, when the Republican party was satisfied 
that it could take care of the great debt, it at once removed the duty 
from all the products that we could not produce in the United States. 
It took the tariff off tea, coffee, and the spices. It relieved many of 
the products which we had to import from taxation, because protec- 
tion says that everything that can not be raised in the United States 
and the people of this country must have, should come in untaxed to 
the people ; that you must put your tax, your burden, your duty, 
upon the competing foreign product — that is, the product which com- 
petes with the American product. The Republican party says : " Put 
it upon that product which competes with our labor and with our in- 
vestments, and make that product bear the burden, and while it is 
putting money in the National Treasury it is standing as a wall of 
defense to our own labor and our own capital." [Applause.] Ah, 
but they say that tliis protective tariff is paid by the consumer. 
There never was a greater economic fallacy enunciated. Protective 
tariffs are never paid by the consumer after the country that enjoys 
protection is capable of supplying the whole market of that country. 
[Applause.] Then competition among our own producers brings 
down and regulates the price. Our own history is the best refutation 
of that fallacy. There is not a single article of production, from the 
watch-spring to the car- wheel, from the smallest article to the largest, 
that has not been cheapened by American production, made possible 
only by a protective tariff. [Applause.] There are men here who 
bought foreign goods when we could not produce the like at home. 
Compare the price you paid then with the price you pay now for our 
own goods, and you will find that it is in your favor from twenty-five 
to fifty per cent, [Applause.] 

A revenue tariff is always paid by the consumer — invariably and 
inevitably. You put a tax on the noncompeting foreign product, 
and who pays it ? What fixes the price ? Why, the foreigner fixes 



PROTECTION AND REVENUE. 373 

the price. Why ? Because there is no competition at home to bring 
the price down. The country that has the monopoly of our con- 
sumption is the country that fixes the price. Is not that so of the 
noncompeting foreign product? We have no domestic production 
to meet the foreign production and regulate and neutralize the price. 
There is nothing here to stop it. The noncompeting foreign produc- 
tion comes in unchecked, and the price, therefore, to the American 
consumer of such a product is the foreign price with the American 
duty added. When we added a duty in war times to tea, coffee 
and spices, and to drugs, the American consumer paid the American 
tariff. Why? Because we could not raise those products in the 
United States, and therefore the foreigner had the monojjoly of this 
market and fixed his own price, and his price was the price in his 
own country, with the American duty added. So it is with any arti- 
cle for which we are not cajiahle of supplying the American demand. 
So it is with sugar. We produce one pound out of every twelve 
that we consume. Eleven pounds of every twelve come from abroad. 
Who fixes the price of sugar to the American consumer? Is it the 
Louisiana sugar grower who produces but one pound out of every 
twelve we consume, or is it the foreign producer who furnishes eleven 
pounds out of every twelve we consume ? Why, there is not a school- 
boy in this audience that does not know that the producer of the 
eleven twelfths fixes the price — that the price of the one twelfth is 
fixed by the price of the eleven twelfths. 

But they say. If we had a free-trade revenue tariff we would cap- 
ture the export trade ; we could go out and control the foreign mar- 
ket. Why talk of the foreign market until we have possessed our 
own ? Why talk about going three thousand miles away, across the 
sea, to find a market for our goods, when we have the best market in 
the world at home, and do not possess all of it now? [Applause.] 

We imported last year $720,000,000 worth of foreign products, 
$350,000,000 at least of which ought to have been produced in the 
United States. Don't you think we had better produce that 1350,- 
000,000 worth, and supply the American demand, before we go to 
looking for a foreign market? What a difference it would have 
made to this country if we could have kept those $350,000,000 at 
home and had them circulating through the arteries of trade and 
the avenues of business ! They would have been felt from one end 
of this country to the other. We imported last year $55,000,000 
worth of iron and steel. How much do you suppose, my fellow- 
citizens, that represents in labor alone, considering the labor in the 



374: SPEECHES AND ADDRESSES OP WILLIAM McKINLEY. 

coal mine, the ore mine, the labor employed in transportation to the 
mills, the labor in the factories, and then the labor employed in 
transporting the finished product ? Why, the amount of iron and 
steel we imported last year represents the labor of 100,000 men for 
300 days, or from 110,000,000 to 815,000,000 in labor alone ! Now, 
the Republican party says, " Give those 300 days' work to 100,000 
American workingmen rather than to 100,000 men on the other side." 
That is the policy of protection ! [Applause.] We imported last 
year $150,000,000 worth of agricultural products, all of which should 
have been produced here, and we imported $14,000,000 worth of 
woolen goods and worsteds, every yard of which ought to have been 
made in our own factories and our own mills. And if that had been 
done, do you imagine that wool last year would have been selling at 
from eighteen to twenty cents a pound, or would it be selling, as it is 
this year, for from twenty-four to thirty-three cents a pound ? You 
increase the manufacturing products of this country in woolens 
$44,000,000 annually, and sheep husbandry in the United States will 
increase, and the price of wool will be remunerative to our own 
domestic producers. 

Ah ! but they say. Protection increases taxation ! Take the dec- 
ade between 1870 and 1880 : Free-trade England increased her taxa- 
tion twenty-one per cent, and protected America diminished her 
taxation one per cent. Next they say, Protection interferes with our 
foreign trade. Between 1850 and 1860, under the revenue tariff policy 
of the Democratic party, this country exported $821,000,000 worth of 
products. Between 1870 and 1880, under the protective tariff policy, 
this country exported, sent out of the United States, $5,100,000,000 
worth of products. [Applause.] Then they declare that protection 
interferes with the commerce of the country. Look at the last dec- 
ade. The commerce of England increased twenty-one per cent ; the 
commerce of France increased thirty-nine per cent ; the commerce 
of the United States increased sixty-eight per cent — all under pro- 
tection. [Applause.] Why, all we want to-day is to look at our own 
history — to read the history of our country ; that is the best contra- 
diction of the fallacies of the revenue tariff and the best vindication 
and approval of the protective system. From 1846 to 1861 we had 
the revenue-tariff policy of the Democratic party ; we had it in its 
simplicity and perfection. What was the result ? Why, when 1861 
came and Abraham Lincoln was inaugurated, we had not a single 
dollar in the Federal Treasury — not one. Worse than that, we had no 
credit. You can sometimes get on without money if you only have 



PROTECTION AND REVENL^E. 375 

good credit. This Government had neither at the close of the revenue- 
tariff period of the Democratic party. The Republicans came in ; a 
great war confronted them. They immediately created a protective 
tariff, patterned after the protective tariff of 1842. What followed? 
Great streams of money flowed into the National Treasury ; manufac- 
tories were built all over the United States, and increased and multi- 
plied. We raised a mighty army, we equipped a great navy, we fur- 
nished the sinews of a destructive war, and brought that war to a 
successful termination. Wlien it was all over we had a debt of 
82,750,000,000. The Democratic leaders said, "You can't pay it; 
you might just as well give up and repudiate it." The Eepublican 
party said, " No, we saved the American Union, and we propose now 
to save her financial honor ! " [Applause.] And we kept on with 
our protective tariff, and to-day, after twenty-four years under the 
protective system, that debt stands not $2,750,000,000, but less than 
$1,100,000,000, with a surplus in the Treasury. [Applause.] We can 
pay every dollar of our debt as it matures, if we want to, without in- 
creasing taxation a farthing. Then we have good credit, and that is 
better than great riches. Good credit to a nation is like a good name 
to an individual. In 1861 James Buchanan tried to sell $25,000,000 
of bonds bearing six per cent interest. Under the revenue-tariff 
policy of the Democratic party he was able to sell but $18,000,000, 
and the Government had to bear a discount of eleven cents on every 
dollar. The Government got eighty-nine cents on the dollar and paid 
six per cent interest at that. Why, this Government got so poor that 
it was like a faded daguerreotype, beyond identification. In January, 
1861, it was so poor that James Buchanan's Secretary of the Treasury 
suggested to Congress that it invite the States to indorse the bonds 
of the Government of the United States, that they might be sold in 
the markets of the world. Think of the Government of the United 
States asking for an indorser ! [Laughter.] It is hard enough for 
you or me, when we want to get a little money, to be compelled to go 
and get bail ; but think of our great Government going about look- 
ing up bail that it may borrow money in the markets of the world ! 
The United States doesn't need any indorser now. [Applause.] It 
can borrow all the money it wants at two per cent interest with a 
single name, and that name is the " United States of America," re- 
generated by the Republican party. [Prolonged applause.] Which 
picture do you like best, that of 1861 or that of 1889 ? 

If we only had *' free raw material " we could get into the export 
trade, sighs the free trader. Why, we have the free raw material now. 



376 SPEECHES AND ADDRESSES OP WILLIAM McKINLEY. 

We have raw material in our own hills and our own valleys, undug 
and undeveloped, only waiting the hand of industry. Grover Cleve- 
land said in the last message he sent to Congress before the election 
— and I have no harsh words for Mr. Cleveland ; I feel every time I 
speak like making a public acknowledgment to him for his free-trade 
message, for without it General Harrison would not be President of 
the United States to-day — but Mr. Cleveland said, " If we only had 
free raw material we could go into the export trade." Why, he wasn't 
familiar with the statutes of the United States ! We have free raw 
material to-day for the export trade, and there is not a business man 
in this city who does not know it. You can go to any country in the 
world, you can buy any raw material you want, bring it to the United 
States, pay the duty fixed by law at the customhouse, take it out, 
manufacture it into the finished product, take it back and enter it for 
the export trade ; enter it at our customhouse for the foreign trade, 
and the Government will give you back ninety per cent of the duty 
you paid upon the raw material, only keeping ten per cent for the ex- 
pense of handling. And yet they talk about free raw material and the 
export trade ! We have it now, and it is not our fault that the Demo- 
cratic party does not know it. [Laughter.] 

Then they say " everything would be so cheap " if we only had 
free trade. Well, everything would be cheap and everybody would 
be cheap. I do not prize the word cheap. It is not a word of hope ; 
it is not a word of comfort ; it is not a word of cheer ; it is not a 
word of inspiration ! It is the badge of poverty ; it is the signal of 
distress ; and there is not a man in this audience, not a single white- 
haired man, who, if he will let his memory go back, will not recall, 
that when things were the cheapest, men were the poorest. [Ap- 
plause.] Stand up, citizens of Cuyahoga County, old men stand up, 
and bear testimony upon this point. When prices were the lowest 
did you not have the least money to buy with? [Applause, and 
cries of " Yes ! "] Cheap ? Why, cheap merchandise means cheap 
men, and cheap men mean a cheap country ; and that is not the kind 
of Government our fathers founded, and it is not the kind their sons 
mean to maintain. [Applause.] If you want cheap things, go where 
you can get them ; that is where you belong ; this is not your abiding 
place. We want labor to be well paid ; we want the products of the 
farm, we want mechanical products, we want everything we make 
and produce to pay a fair compensation to the producer. That is 
what makes good times ; that is what protective tariffs mean. But, 
complains the mournful tariff reformer, " You have strikes under pro- 



i 



PROTECTION AND REVENUE. q^'j 

tection." Strikes have nothing to do with protection or free trade. 
They have strikes in England ; they have strikes in every free-trade 
country in the world. We have strikes in protected America. And 
we always will have them, because when capital, in the opinion of 
labor, seeks to get too much out of labor, labor will strike, whether 
under free trade or under protection. 

Finally they say, You have been overburdening the people with 
taxation all these years ! Well, you do not look very much like an 
overtaxed people here in the city of Cleveland, and this is the kind 
of audiences that I have been addressing all over Ohio. Overtaxed ? 
You are the least taxed people of any country in the world. The 
Eepublican party overburdens you with taxation? Why, it com- 
menced at the very conclusion of the war to roll from your shoulders 
the burden of taxation, and it has reduced the taxes annually $368,- 
000,000 ever since. Every year $368,000,000 have been rolled off the 
shoulders of the people, and now we have a country the most pros- 
perous in the world. 

But, my fellow-citizens, you may ask. What has the tariff question 
to do with the canvass in Ohio this year? What has it to do with a 
State election ? Why, if you will but reflect, it has everything to do 
with it— everything to do with it. You elect this year a Legislature. 
What does that Legislature do ? It elects a United States Senator for 
six years. AVhat does that United States Senator do ? Why, if he is a 
Republican he votes for protection ; if he is a Democrat he votes for 
free trade. It has everything to do with it. And if you believe in 
this system of protection you must express your belief in the votes 
you give for members of the Legislature. You can not vote directly 
for Senator ; you can not go to the Senate of the United States and 
vote your sentiments ; you must do it through agents— first the legis- 
lative agents, then the senatorial agents. And did it ever occur to 
you that by your votes this year you will part with your sovereignty 
for six years beyond recall ? You can not call your representative 
back if he does not vote as you want him to ; you part with your 
sovereignty until March 4, 1897. Therefore it is of the highest 
moment that your legislative ticket should represent your protection 
sentiment and then it will find expression in the election of a United 
States Senator. Why, for twenty years we have had but one Repub- 
lican Senator in that greatest of legislative bodies— only one. True, 
he has been big enough to count two [great applause] ; he is about 
the size of any two average Senators, but just the same we have had 
but one Republican Senator for the past twenty years of our history. 



V 

\ 



378 SPEECHES AND ADDRESSES OP WILLIAM McKINLEY. 

All this time Ohio has been a Republican State, giving from 5,000 to 
25,000 /Republican majority. More than that, the voice of Ohio has 
been practically suiDpressed in the Senate of the United States ; when 
John Sherman voted Aye, Allen G. Thurman has been there to vote 
No ; or George H. Pendleton has been there to vote No ; or Henry 
B. Payne has been there to vote No ; so that through all these years 
Ohio has, in fact, had no vote and no voice in the Senate of the 
United States, so far as practical legislation was concerned. But 
what signifies a single vote ? Well, I have seen the political control 
of the Senate turned in a single day by a single vote. You know 
that the protective tariff of 1842 was stricken down in 1846 by a 
single vote, that of George M. Dallas, Vice-President of the United 
States ! I saw Thomas F. Bayard, of Delaware, within ten years, 
made presiding officer of the greatest parliamentary body of the 
world by a single vote. So it means everything. I do not care who 
you send. I don't care who John Sherman's associate may be, only 
I want him to be a Republican. [Great aj)plause.] But I want for 
the next ten years — aye, for twenty years — to have, instead of one big 
vote, two big Republican votes from Ohio. 

And while I am on this legislative and State question, let me say 
I not only want the Legislature to be Republican, but I want every 
friend of mine in Cuyahoga County, I want every Republican in 
Cuyahoga County to give his cheerful vote to our splendid candidate 
for Governor, Joseph Benson Foraker ! [Great applause.] He has 
been our Governor for four years. We have had a good many great 
Governors of Ohio. We have had Chase, and Dennison, and Tod, and 
Brough, and one of God's noblemen in the person of Rutherford B. 
Hayes. [Applause.] But you may scan the public record of Gov- 
ernor Foraker and you will find that it will shine brightly beside the 
best. He is brave, he is courageous, he is manly, he is brilliant, and 
even the Democrats admit that he is able. [Laughter, and a voice, 
" They have to."] He calls things by their right names, and when 
he sees something he doesn't like he hits it, and he hits it hard. 
[Applause.] Voice your approval of his four years' administration 
by giving to him your full vote and an old-fashioned Rejiublican ma- 
jority in Cuyahoga County. 

But they claim that we have boards of election in Ohio that are 
subversive of the freedom and independence of the people. They say 
that our election boards really interfere with the right of suffrage. 
Why, my fellow-citizens, what are they for ? They are to protect the 
right of suffrage ; they are intended to give every man who is entitled 



PROTECTION AND REVENUE. 379 

to vote just one vote, and no more ; they are intended to keep every 
man who is not entitled to a vote from casting a vote at tht. polls. 
Nobody ought to object to that ; nobody but the man who wants to 
vote illegally can object. No man objects to the law of larceny except 
the man who wants to steal. No man objects to this registration 
board unless he wants illegal votes polled. And so I say it is the 
duty of every legal voter in the city of Cleveland to inconvenience 
himself long enough to go and register, that he may thus aid in 
purging the ballot. It affects us in the country as much as it does 
you. A hundred illegal votes given to the Democratic party in the 
city of Cleveland equals a hundred legal Republican votes in any of 
the counties of the Western Reserve. It not only protects you, but it 
gives force and effect and efficacy to the will of the legal voters of the 
State. Isn't it amusing to hear the Democratic party talk about 
interfering with the right of suffrage ? — the party that hasn't won a 
National victory for forty years that was not the price of fraud and 
the wicked suppression of the ballot! Why, they have held the 
lower House of Congress by fraud for fifteen years. Their majorities 
are secured by the most violent, flagrant disregard of the Constitu- 
tion of the United States — by nullification, ballot suppression, and 
fraud. Grover Cleveland would not have been President of the 
United States if every man who was entitled to vote had been per- 
mitted to exercise that franchise, and when he exercised it his ballot 
had been counted as it was cast. [Applause.] If we can have an 
honest ballot and a fair count in this country, the Democratic party 
will not control the Government for the next fifty years. I don't 
know what you think about it, but I say to you, my fellow-citizens, 
that the Constitution of the United States must be observed, re- 
spected and obeyed in every part of this Republic by every citizen. 
I was glad to see that the other night at Cincinnati that grand old 
hero General Sherman, in addressing the Army of the Tennessee, 
surrounded by his old soldiers of every political party, said, speaking 
of this wicked suppression of the ballot : " It is not right, it is not 
honest, it is not fair." Then, turning to his old comrades, he said : 
"Boys, this is not the settlement we made at Appomattox Court 
House, which was afterwards put into the Constitution of the United 
States." [Applause.] Those were grand words, and they were words 
that should burn in every heart to-night. 

So far National legislation has not reached the trouble ; so far the 
strong arm of the Government has not corrected this flagrant abuse. 
But it will correct it, and that speedily, let us hope. It is not manly, 
25 



380 SPEECHES AND ADDRESSES OP WILLIAM McKINLEY. 

it does not become a brave people to stand by and see their weaker 
fellow-citizens deprived of their just constitutional rights. 

" Happy are all free peoples, too strong to be disposessed, 
But blessed are they among nations who dare to be strong for the rest." [Ap- 
plause.] 

Our black allies must neither be forsaken nor deserted. I weigh 
my words. This is the great question not only of the present, but 
it is the great question of the future ; and this question will never be 
settled until it is settled upon principles of justice, recognizing the 
sanctity of the Constitution of the United States. [Applause.] We 
cherish no resentments from the war ; we have no bitterness against 
the people of the South. We want them to be our brothers, not only 
in name but in spirit and in heart. We bid them enjoy equally our 
prosperity. But at the same time we bid them obey the Constitution 
of the country. [Applause.] We have no feeling, I say, against 
that section ; but this contest will go on until this right shall not be 
a mere cold formality of constitutional enactment, but a living birth- 
right which the poorest and the humblest may confidently enjoy, and 
which the richest and most powerful dare not deny. It will go on 
until the American ballot box shall be as sacred and as pure as the 
American home. [Prolonged applause.] 



THE QUESTION OF A QUOEUM. 

Speech in" the House of Representatives, Fifty-first 
Congress, January 30, 1890. 

[Frotn the Co7igressional Record.'] 

The question before the House recurring on the appeal from the decision of 
Speaker Reed, who the day previous had held that members present in the House, 
although declining to vote, should be counted as present to constitute a quorum 
within the meaning of the Constitution, Mr. McKinley said — 

Mr. Speaker : No one appreciates more than I do the impor- 
tance and gravity of the question which confronts us this morning. 
No one can realize the full import of the question we are to deter- 
mine to-day unless he has been a member of the House of Eepre- 
sentatives during the last dozen years, or unless he has been a close 
and daily student of its proceedings. This question is important in 
every aspect in which we may view it — important not only to the 
majority, but to the minority ; important now and for the future ; 
and of such supreme importance to all of us and to the people whose 
interests we represent, that we may well pause and consider it in 
all its bearings as a practical question under the Constitution of 
the United States, unmoved by passion and unaffected by partisan- 
ship. 

It is, as the gentleman from Kentucky [Mr. Carlisle] said on yes- 
terday, much more of a constitutional question than a parliamentary 
one. And it is of enough import and consequence to require at the 
very outset a statement of what has occurred, of what has led up to 
the strange situation in which we find ourselves to-day. Yesterday the 
gentleman from Pennsylvania [Mr. Dalzell], authorized as he was by 
his Committee, called to the attention of the House an election case, 
which, under the Constitution of the United States, is a question of 
the highest privilege. When he presented that case the gentleman 
from Georgia [Mr. Crisp] raised against it a question of considera- 



382 SPEECHES AND ADDRESSES OP WILLIAM McKINLEY. 

tion, and upon that question the yeas and nays were demanded and 
ordered by gentlemen on the other side of the Chamber, who in less 
than thirty minutes afterward sat in their seats silent and refused 
to vote — refused to vote under their own call for the yeas and nays. 
[Laughter and applause.] 

When that yea-and-nay vote was concluded it disclosed that there 
were 161 votes in the affirmative and two votes in the negative, lack- 
ing two of a majority of the House of Eepresentatives as at present 
constituted, it requiring 165 members to constitute a quorum of the 
House by the present membership under the Constitution of the 
United States. Thereupon the Speaker of the House, as he had the 
right to do, as I will show hereafter, proceeded to note that thirty or 
thirty-five members, who had refused to vote on that roll-call for con- 
sideration, which they had demanded and secured, were present in 
their seats, refusing to vote, present in their places when their names 
were called. Therefore, with the 163 Eepresentatives whose names 
were disclosed by the roll-call, to which were added the thirty names 
noted to be present by the Speaker of the House of Eepresentatives, 
the Speaker declared there was a constitutional quorum present ready 
to perform public business. Now from that ruling of the Speaker 
the gentleman from Georgia [Mr. Crisp] took an appeal, and it is 
that appeal which is before the House of Eepresentatives to-day. 

What is involved in that appeal ? All that is involved in it is a 
simple practical question of fact : Was there a constitutional quorum 
present? Nobody questions what the Constitution means. It is 
plain and explicit that a majority of the House is necessary to con- 
stitute a quorum to do business. Everybody knows how many mem- 
bers it takes to make a majority of the House. Therefore the only 
question to be determined under this appeal is whether a majority of 
the House, to wit, 165 Eepresentatives, were present in their seats in 
the House of Eepresentatives and in session to do public business. 
How is that to be ascertained ? How is that count to be determined ? 
Why, it is to be determined, Mr. Speaker, as you determine any other 
fact. It may be determined by a call of the House, it may be deter- 
mined by a rising vote, it may be determined by tellers, and it may 
be determined, as it was yesterday, by the Speaker of the House, by 
actual count. 

Now, there is no doubt about this question of fact. Nobody ques- 
tions the count of the Speaker, because it is an incontrovertible fact 
that there were 185 or 190 members present, as the Speaker's an- 
nouncement made it, and there were, as known to all of us, nearly 300 



THE QUESTION OF A QUORUM. 383 

Representatives of the people sitting in their seats on this floor when 
the vote was taken on the consideration of the election case. Nearly 
300 Representatives, elected and qualified, who had taken an oath to 
perform their duties under the Constitution, were here, visibly here, 
and nowhere else. Was not the count made by the Speaker abso- 
lutely correct to the number and names he counted ? Will any gen- 
tleman who voted or whose name was disclosed by the Speaker's 
count rise in his place and declare he was not present? I know there 
was an inadvertence, an error, as explained by the Speaker, as to one 
member [laughter and applause on the Democratic side], but no 
greater inadvertence than occurs every day of our legislative session 
when the roll is called by the Clerk. And so I say, Mr. Speaker, as 
this is wholly and purely a question of fact, when that fact is not con- 
troverted, when it is not contradicted, when it is not disputed, when 
there is indubitable evidence that more than a quorum of gentlemen 
are present on the floor of the House, we have met the constitutional 
requirement of a majority capable to do the public business and dis- 
charge the duties devolved in our trust to the people. 

If the position of the gentleman from Kentucky [Mr. Carlisle] be 
a correct one, then it requires a majority of the whole House voting 
to constitute a quorum ; and that is the logic of his position, that the 
roll-call itself must disclose that a majority of the House is voting 
or else there is no quorum ; any proposition or measure passed in the 
absence of such majority actually voting would be passed in contra- 
vention of the Constitution of the United States. That is his asser- 
tion ; that is his position. But he finds no warrant for that in the 
Constitution of the United States. The letter of that Constitution 
does not declare that a majority of the House voting shall constitute a 
quorum. It does not declare that a majority of the House of Repre- 
sentatives answering to their names upon the roll-call is essential to 
a constitutional quorum. It does not provide in any one of its sections 
how that question of a quorum is to be determined, how the number 
of members is to be ascertained. It is left to the House, and the 
House can leave it to the Speaker, whose organ he is. Why, there is 
abundance of general parliamentary law upon this subject maintain- 
ing the correctness of the Speaker's holding. In Cushing's Digest 
of Parliamentary Law it is declared : 

If, therefore, it appears upon division, or if notice be taken by any member, 
that a quorum is not present, it will become the immediate duty of the presiding 
officer to count the members, and if they do not amount to a quorum, to suspend 
all further proceedings. 



384 SPEECHES AND ADDRESSES OF WILLIAM McKINLEY. 

Then I turn again to Gushing, on page 97, and I read a single 
paragraph upon parliamentary law : 

The assemblies, therefore, . . . may establish the quorum at any number they 
please, provided it is not less than the constitutional number. Thus, in Massa- 
chusetts, where the Senate is to consist of 40 members, not less than 16 of whom 
are to constitute a quorum, that body may itself determine upon and fix its own 
quorum at any number between 16 and 40. In some of the ways above men- 
tioned — 

And here is what I desire especially to call your attention to — 

the quorum of each legislative assembly becomes established at a fixed number — 

We have a fixed number here — a majority, whatever it may be — 

the presence or absence of which can always be ascertained by counting. This 
is usually done, after the assembly is constituted, by its presiding officer, who 
announces or reports the result. In the Senate of the United States this duty is 
performed by the Sergeant-at-Arms, upon whose report to the presiding officer 
the latter announces the result. For the purpose of ascertaining whether a 
quorum is present, every person who is entitled to vote — that is, every person 
whose return as a member has been admitted, and who has been regularly sworn 
as such, and no other person — is to be counted, etc. 

This distinctly establishes the principle that the presiding ofificer 
may count the body itself, and that such a course is the usual parlia- 
mentary practice ; that it is the duty of the presiding officer to count 
the members of the body over which he presides who may be present, 
in order to constitute a quorum. The gentleman from Kentucky de- 
clared in his remarks on yesterday that under the ruling of the 
Speaker one Eepresentative could carry a bill if 167 gentlemen sat in 
their seats in silence. Well, so he could, and so he ought to, if 167 
men sit in silence in their seats and refuse to vote when their votes 
would defeat the proposition ; then the vote of a single member ought 
to carry a bill. [Applause on the Eepublican side.] And it has 
been done, Mr. Speaker, over and over again, every week at every session 
of Congress for the last quarter of a century. 

Mr. Springer. But not on a yea-and-nay vote. 

The question of the yea-and-nay vote has nothing whatever to do 
with the principle involved. 

Mr. Carlisle. Would it interrupt the gentleman from Ohio to ask him a 
question just there? 

Certainly not. 

Mr. Carlisle. The Constitution of the United States provides that when 
the President returns to the House in which it originated a bill without his ap- 



THE QUESTION OF A QUORUM. 335 

proval it shall not become a law unless repassed by a vote of two thirds, and the 
yeas and nays shall be taken and entered upon the Journal. I understand the 
gentleman from Ohio to contend that if there were 165 members actually present, 
then that any member or any part of that number of members voting, the 
remainder being present and silent, will be sufficient to pass the bill. The ques- 
tion, then, is this : Suppose that the President of the United States should send 
back to this House a bill with his objections, does the gentleman insist that one 
man could pass that bill over the President's veto if there were 166 members 
present and not voting ? 

My friend from Kentucky may be very ingenious in his question, 
but he is not altogether fair. I am not discussing the question as to 
what the House could do upon a bill sent back by a President with 
his veto. [Derisive applause on the Democratic side.] There is a 
special constitutional provision which covers that character of legis- 
lation, and that provision I am not now discussing, nor is it in any 
way involved in the issue before us. 

Mr. Carlisle. Ah! but no greater quorum is required then than in the 
other case. It is simply a provision here that a vote of two thirds must pass the 
bill over the President's veto in order that it shall become a law, and I contend 
that it must be two thirds of a quorum, but the other third must participate. 

The gentleman must recollect that under that provision of the 
Constitution there is a yea-and-nay vote required, which does not 
apply in the case of the passage of other measures. [Applause on the 
Republican side.] 

Mr. Carlisle. But one fifth of the members have the right to make it a yea- 
and-nay vote under the Constitution, and it becomes just as obligatory then as in 
the other case. [Applause on the Democratic side.] 

Yes ; and when gentlemen sit in their seats and refuse to perform 
a public duty they are betraying a public trust, as gentlemen on that 
side of the House have been doing for the past twenty-four hours. 
[Applause on the Republican side.] 

Mr. Speaker, the point I am making to the House, and which I 
am seeking to enforce, is this : That under the position taken by the 
gentlemen on the other side of the Chamber no bill can pass this 
House unless a majority of the membership of the House shall vote 
on the one side or the other on the bill or proposition under con- 
sideration. I will assume that to be their position when the yeas and 
nays are called. What is the difference between the propositions, 
whether a vote be by viva voce or by division or by tellers, or whether 
it be by yea and nay ? The question is, whether a majority of the 
House requisite to constitute a quorum have voted, no matter how 
the vote be taken ; that is the inevitable logic of the position of the 



3S6 SPEECHES AND ADDRESSES OF WILLIAM McKINLEY. 

gentlemen on the other side. They must vote or not be counted, is 
the foundation of the gentleman's argument, whether the vote be 
taken by roll-call or in any other way. From that position the gen- 
tleman can not escape. 

Why, Mr. Speaker, if the position of the gentleman from Ken- 
tucky [Mr. Carlisle] be true, then as Speaker of the House — able and 
honorable Speaker that he was for six years — he repeatedly signed 
bills and joint resolutions, giving them the force of law, which never 
had received the vote of a constitutional quorum. He has done it over 
and over again, and done it, too, when the public records of this 
House show, as announced by him as Speaker, that less than a 
majority of the House voted for and against their passage. It does 
not matter whether the point of no quorum is made or not, if a ma- 
jority voting is required to give force and effect to the passage of a 
bill. It is required because the Constitution directs it. 

I take another case, Mr. Speaker. Suppose twenty gentlemen on 
this side of the Chamber, when a yea-and-nay vote was called, should 
for any reason sufficient unto themselves, either because they had an 
interest in the measure or for any other good reason, ask to be ex- 
cused from voting, and supposing a motion should be made that the 
twenty Representatives on this floor be excused from voting because 
they had an interest in a measure, and, in fact, were excused, then 
would any man claim that those twenty gentlemen should not be 
counted to constitute a quorum, although they did not vote? 

Mr. Gates. Are they not participating in the proceedings ? 

I beg pardon. Exactly. They are participating, and they are 
participating no more in the proceedings of the House than you were 
participating yesterday [loud applause on the Republican side], the 
only difference being that these twenty men were acting in an orderly 
[laughter and applause] and a lawful and parliamentary manner 
[laughter and applause], and the gentlemen on the other side were 
acting in defiance of law and the orderly conduct of public business. 
[Applause on the Republican side.] 

Mr. Grain. Being excused, would they be counted ? 

Undoubtedly, to make a quorum, they would be counted. That 
is the point I make. [Applause on the Republican side.] And be- 
cause they are excused and counted, does the fact that a member who 
has not respect enough for the House to ask to be excused give him 
license to break a quorum and stop the proceedings of this House 
and its public business, when, if excused from voting, he would be 



THE QUESTION OP A QUORUM. 387 

counted to make a quorum ? Mr. Speaker, this question is not a new 
one. The gentleman from Kentucky [Mr. Carlisle] said yesterday 
that there had been no decision like this in a hundred years ; that 
you stood there as an exception to your illustrious predecessors who 
had gone before you, and that their uniform decisions had been 
against yours. Why, this question was not known to the fathers. 

Mr. Grain. Nor ever would have been. 

Your intellectual performances yesterday and to-day were never 
dreamed of by the framers of the Constitution. [Laughter and ap- 
plause on the Republican side.] 

I say, Mr. Speaker, that what occurred when this very section was 
under discussion by its framers throws some light on what the fa- 
thers believed might be possible in the way of destroying a quorum 
and stopping public business. For, sir, they never fancied that sullen 
silence was a statesmanlike way of stopping public business. The 
later generation of statesmen have inaugurated it. We have done it 
— all of us. I am not saying that you gentlemen on the other side 
are doing differently from what we have done for fifteen or twenty 
years past. [Cheers on the Democratic side.] I have sat here and 
filibustered day after day in silence, refusing to vote, but I can not 
now recall that I ever did it for a high or a noble or a worthy pur- 
pose. [Laughter and applause.] There was never a time I did it 
that I now remember when I did not feel ashamed of myself. [Ap- 
plause on the Eepublican side.] 

Mr. Breckinridge, of Kentucky. That is the precise difference between the 
gentleman and — 

Mr. Speaker, I do not want my revolutionary friend to come at 
me in that way. [Laughter.] He disturbs me. Not only has that 
been my feeling in the past, but if gentlemen will be honest with 
themselves and honest with each other, if the old members who have 
served here for twelve or fifteen years will turn their minds back to 
those occasions, they will remember how we commenced our filibus- 
tering, sometimes on one side, sometimes on the other, because of a 
personal pique, or because we thought that some slight had been put 
upon one side or the other, or upon some member of the majority or 
minority. 

But we never continued that filibustering on any occasion that the 
majority on both sides of the Chamber, Eepublicans and Democrats, 
did not confess to themselves and to each other that they were 
ashamed of the whole performance. This mode of stopping legisla- 



388 SPEECHES AND ADDRESSES OF WILLIAM McKINLEY. 

tion was never thought of by the framers of the Constitution. In 
the discussion of this very section Mr. Gouverneur Morris moved to 
fix the quorum at thirty-three members in the House of Representa- 
tives and fourteen in the Senate. He said : 

This is a majority of the present number and will be a bar to the Legislature. 
Fix the number low and they will generally attend, knowing that advantage may 
be taken of their absence. 

It never occurred to him, the men of that time never dreamed, 
that any advantage could be taken by " the presence " of members of 
this legislative body. They never dreamed that you could stop legis- 
lation when actually present and in your seats by cold and studied 
silence. It was your absence that they feared and for which they 
provided a remedy, and absence is the manly way to do it. If you 
are going to have revolution, have it in a proper way and withdraw 
from the House of Representatives. [Cheers on the Republican 
side.] Why, Mr. Speaker, look at it — look at what Mr. Morris fur- 
ther says : 

The secession of a small number ought not to be suffered to break a quorum. 

He contemplated secession, you see ; going out, leaving the House 
the accustomed way, the parliamentary way, the constitutional way, 
if you please. 

The secession of a small number ought not to be suffered to break a quorum. 

He does not say that the silence of one hundred and fifty mem- 
bers when present ought to break a quorum, for he never anticipated] 
that such a means could be used to break a quorum. He never cal- 
culated that a quorum could be broken while members were in theirj 
seats participating in the public business; that Representatives couldj 
be present and still counted as absent. 

In the National councils they may be fatal. Besides other mischiefs, if a few! 
men can break up a quorum, they may seize a moment when a particular part of I 
the continent may be in need of immediate aid, to extort, by threatening a seces-j 
sion, and thereby secure some unjust and selfish measure. 

There is no danger, he seemed to think, when all were present. 
But, I have said that the Constitution does not tell us how to ascer- 
tain whether there is a majority present or not ; whether the fact isi 
to be ascertained by vote, by roll-call, or by the count of the Speaker. 
The gentleman from Kentucky [Mr. Carlisle] says that the later 
provision, which authorized less than a quorum to bring in absentees, 
is evidence that you must have a full quorum voting in order to do 
public business. Why, sir, if the gentleman is right, that provision 



THE QUESTION OP A QUORUM. 3S9 

of the Constitution is absolutely nugatory, absolutely without force 
or effect, and the framers of the Constitution need not have made it. 
What did they make it for? They said that less than a quorum 
might send for absent members and bring them into the House. For 
what purpose ? Why, to count them as a quorum, in order that pub- 
lic business might be done. Suppose that, when you brought in the 
absent members under that constitutional provision, they should sit 
in silence and refuse to vote. If their silence could prevent the 
House from counting them to make a quorum, then that constitu- 
tional provision would be absolutely forceless, inoperative, and the 
supremest folly. No gentleman can get away from that conclusion. 
It is the duty of every member of this House to be present at its sit- 
tings. It is the duty of every member of this House to vote when his 
name is called, unless he is excused. That is the rule in every parlia- 
mentary body ; and when gentlemen sitting here in their seats refuse 
to perform their public functions and their public duties, they are in 
no position to turn upon us, who are ready to do public business here, 
and call us " revolutionists." 

Mr. McLane, of Maryland, one of the most distinguished mem- 
bers that ever sat on this floor, a man who was a member of this 
House when some of us were too young to be here, and who came 
here later and served in the Forty-fifth Congress with several gentle- 
men whom I see before me — Mr. McLane characterized proceedings 
like yours of yesterday as absolutely revolutionary. I have his speech 
here before me ; and he made another declaration to which attention 
has not been called, namely, that the amendment proposed to the 
rules of the House by Mr. Tucker, of Virginia, in the very line of 
the Speaker's ruling, was clearly constitutional, and was essential 
for the proper performance of public business. Mr. McLane, who was 
minister to France under the administration of President Cleveland, 
said what I am now about to read when this question was up for dis- 
cussion in the Forty-sixth Congress : 

The amendment not only does not provide for constructive voting, but it 
states distinctly that the member refusing to vote shall remain recorded not 
voting, precisely as if he had been excused from voting, but that his presence 
shall be noted and he shall be counted to make a quorum. The analogy I pre- 
sent is, that if the House had excused him — 

The very point to which the gentleman from Texas [Mr. Grain] 
called my attention a moment ago — 

The analogy I present is, that if the House had excused him he would still 
not have voted, but would have been counted to make a quorum. 



390 SPEECHES AND ADDRESSES OF WILLIAM McKlXLEY. 

And then he declares that this amendment is strictly within the 
Constitution and justified by that instrument. 

Mr. CoMPTON. From what is the gentleman reading ? 

From the Congressional Eecord of January 28, 1880 — the same 
debate to which the gentleman from Georgia [Mr. Crisp] referred in 
his remarks yesterday. I have also in this Eecord some very pun- 
gent remarks from the then Eepresentative from Kentucky [Mr. 
Blackburn], also from Mr. Phister; and also what that great con- 
stitutional lawyer, Mr. Tucker, once the honored Chairman of the 
Judiciary Committee of this House, said on the same subject, to 
which reference was made by my distinguished colleague from Illinois 
[Mr. Cannon], in the debate of yesterday. They read as follows : 

Mr. Blackburn. The gentleman, as I understand it, offers this clause to 
come immediately after No, 1 of Rule VIII, and to be No. 3 : 

" ' 2. "Whenever a quorum fails to vote on any question and objection is made 
for that cause, there shall be a call of the House, and the yeas and nays on the 
pending question shall at the same time be ordered. The Clerk shall call the 
roll, and each member, as he answers to his name, or is brought before the House, 
under the proceedings of the call of the House, shall vote on the pending ques- 
tion. If those voting on the question, and those who are present and decline to 
vote, shall together make a majority of the House, the Speaker shall declare that 
a quorum is constituted, and the pending question shall be decided as a majority 
of those voting shall appear.' " 

Mr. Tucker. The purpose of the amendment I propose is very obvious. It 
is to prevent that which we have very often seen in this House, and which has 
occurred very often in preceding Congresses ; and I offer the amendment without 
reference to its partisan influence in any direction, but it is to prevent the non- 
action of the House when a quorum is actually present. A majority of the mem- 
bers of this House, if present, constitute a quorum to do business. The Constitu- 
tion does not say that a majority voting shall constitute a quorum, but that a 
majority of the House shall constitute a quorum to do business; and the practice 
of the English Parliament, from which most of our rules on this subject have 
been taken, is that, whenever the House of Commons meets, the Speaker counts 
the members who are present, and announces that a quorum is present if there is 
a sufficient number ; so that the Speaker of the House of Commons may, as the 
Speaker here, by ocular demonstration, become satisfied that there is a quorum 
present. And the purpose of this amendment is not to make any member vote 
when he does not choose to vote, but to have a call of the House when a quorum 
is disclosed as not present upon a division on a pending question ; and then, as 
each member's name is called and he answers to his name, he is noted as present. 
He may vote or not, as he pleases. If he does not answer to his name, the Sergeant- 
at-Arms under the call is sent for him ; if he is in the House he is brought to the 
bar, and by ocular demonstration is proved to be present. And thus we may 
have an ascertained quorum of the House though there may not be a quorum 
voting. If you will look at the debates on the Federal Constitution on this sub- 



THE QUESTION OF A QUORUM. 39I 

ject yon will find that the only danger the framers of that Constitution appre- 
hended was the action of less than a majority of the House when more than a 
majority were absent from the House ; but there was no apprehension expressed 
in the debates, and no apprehension felt, that there would be any action by a 
majority of those voting if there were enough present to constitute a majority 
of the House. And so, sir, all our rules have looked to the question of present 
and absent members. If a member is not present, the Sergeant-at-Arms is sent 
for him. When brought in he is present, and though he may not choose to vote, 
as a number of gentlemen do not choose to vote, on questions that come before 
the House, that does not destroy the action of the House. The amendment does 
not require a quorum to be present to make a decision of the House valid, but it 
only requires there shall be a quorum present to enable the majority to 'decide 
upon a question. If the distinguished gentleman from New Jersey [Mr. Robeson] 
be correct in the statement he made the other day, that there must be a majority 
acting upon a question, the effect would be this : Under our Constitution no 
measure could pass against a dissenting minority unless a majority of the whole 
House voted for the measure ; because all that a minority has to do in the House 
upon any measure is to remain silent ; and if they do not, by voting, disclose the 
fact that they are present, the argument would be that if there is not a quorum 
voting on the question it is lost, or there can be no decision. That, sir, would re- 
sult in this conclusion : That unless a majority of the whole House voted for any 
measure to which there was a minority dissenting it could not pass the House. 
There are a great many of the State Constitutions to which an amendment of 
this kind has been made, that there shall be a majority of the whole House to 
pass a bill. But that is not the provision of the Federal Constitution. It is 
simply that a majority shall constitute a quorum, and then the decision of a 
question shall be by the majority of that majority. I have offered tliis amend- 
ment, as I have said, not from any partisan standpoint, and I mean no disrespect 
to anybody, and I feel no gentleman on the other side will charge me with disre- 
spect toward them ; but it seems to me not to be in accordance with the progress 
of the age we live in that we should sit here in a condition of nonaction under 
the self-delusion that we are not present when we are present, and that there 
shall be a power on the part of gentlemen here upon any question of remaining 
silent and saying, " You can not prove I am here unless I choose to open my 
mouth." 

Mr. Blackburn. I do not mean to cavil or clamor against the opposition 
which may be offered to this amendment on this floor; but I do say that this 
amendment offered by the gentleman from Virginia does not go as far as many 
of the States in the rules of their legislative bodies have gone. It does not direct 
that a member refusing to vote shall be recorded as voting in the negative. 
When a member refuses to answer to his name— a duty made imperative by ex- 
isting rule, which says that he shall vote unless he be excused — the amendment 
of my friend from Virginia simply provides that when a member shall fail to 
discharge his duty imposed upon him by the highest obligation he can possibly 
bear, an obligation made imperative by the plain language of the rule, when re- 
fusing to discharge such a duty he sliall not be reported or recorded as voting at 
all, but his presence shall be noted in order to prevent the absence of a quorum. 
I do not j'jean to commit myself to the theory that there should be no power 



392 SPEECHES AND ADDRESSES OP WILLIAM McKINLEY. 

given to a minority to impede or obstruct legislation, I know that there are 
times and occasions upon which I would not abridge that power if 1 were able. 
Where the right to offer amendments has been denied, where reasonable oppor- 
tunity for debate has been refused to the minority, it is not only their right but 
it is their duty to obstruct such legislation. It matters not whether I stand here 
with the majority or with the minority, I shall always advocate and demand that 
right. But I say that the report submitted by this Committee is not, upon any 
fair construction, amenable to the criticism that it is its purpose, even as supple- 
mented by the gentleman from Virginia, to abridge in any material respect the 
right that the minority should hold in this House, Take this revision, adopted 
as a whole, and incorporate in it the amendment now pending, and the minority 
will still be amply provided with every facility to obstruct and impede legislation 
where debate has been refused and the right of amendment denied. 

Mr. McLane. I for one am not very keen to adopt the amendment of the 
gentleman from Virginia [Mr. Tucker], because frequent occasions do occur when 
I would much rather resort to a revolutionary proceeding than submit to the ar- 
bitrary and tyrannical conduct of a majority [applause on the Republican side] ; 
but, although I am not keen to adopt the amendment of the honorable gentleman 
from Virginia, I can not allow myself to pretend for a moment that it is a legal 
or proper proceeding to defeat legislation in that manner. The gentleman from 
Kentucky has very well made the point that if a majority are present to do busi- 
ness, though they may not vote, the business can be done ; and under this very 
clause of the Constitution which gives us the right to adopt rules, we provide 
that a member may be excused from voting. Ten, twenty, fifty members may be 
excused from voting ; and yet, though they do not vote, they count to make a 
quorum. I presume nobody will gainsay that. The amendment of the gentle- 
man from Virginia is not only perfectly constitutional, but it is substantially 
what the existing rule provides in regard to members excused from voting, though 
it is extended to members who are not excused. The rule in the revision and in 
the existing code provides for excusing members ; and the gentleman from Vir- 
ginia proposes now to extend that provision to members who are not excused. 

This question is well stated by Hon. George Glover Crocker, 
President of the Massachusetts Senate, in his work on Principles and 
Procedures in Deliberative Bodies, to which I invite the close atten- 
tion of the House : 

If a quorum is present, vote valid, though less than quorum votes. — It may be 
laid down as a general rule that it is the duty of every member of an organiza- 
tion not only to be present at its meetings, but also to vote upon the questions 
which arise. Hence it is that a vote is valid and binding upon the Assembly if a 
quorum of the Assembly is present, even though a quorum does not vote. If a 
quorum is present, a motion is carried, if supported by a majority of those who 
actually vote. Any other course would enable a small minority, by neglecting 
their duty, to have more power than they would have if they voted. Thus, if 
fifty members constitute a quorum, and fifty members are present, it would be 
obviously wrong to allow one member, who is opposed to a pending motion, to 
prevent the passage of the motion by abstaining from voting, when, it he voted, 

I 



THE QUESTION OP A QUORUM. 393 

the motion would be carried by a vote of 49 to 1. In all cases, however, where, on 
a counted vote, it appears that a quorum has not voted, the presumption is thereby 
raised that a quorum is not present, and unless this presumption is overthrown 
the vote must be considered void. This presumption can be overthrown by proof 
that a quorum was actually present at the time when the vote was taken ; and if 
it is so overthrown, then the vote is valid. If a quorum does not vote, but is in 
fact present, the Secretary should make entry in the records that on a count of 
the Assembly it was found that a quorum was present. 

Now, Mr. Speaker, what is this question ? What are we contend- 
ing about ? "We are contending as to how it shall be ascertained that 
we have a constitutional majority present in the House. We insist, 
and the Speaker's ruling so declares, that members in their seats 
shall be counted for the purpose of making a quorum, and that their 
refusal to respond to their names upon a call of the roll, though pres- 
ent, shall not deprive this House of moving in the discharge of great 
public duties and stop all legislation. Gentlemen on the other side 
insist upon what? That they shall perpetuate a fiction — that is what 
it is — that they shall perjietuate a fiction because they say it is hoary 
with age, a fiction that declares that although members are present in 
their seats they shall be held under a fiction to be constructively ab- 
sent. That is what they are contending for. We are contending that 
this shall be a fact and a truth, not a fiction and a falsehood, and 
that members who sit in their seats in this Hall shall be counted as 
present, because they are present. [Applause on the Eepublican side.] 
They want the Journal to declare a lie ; we Avant the Journal to. 
declare the truth. [Renewed applause.] And it is the truth that 
hurts their position and makes it indefensible ; it is the continuance 
of the fiction that they invoke in justification of that position. It is 
about time to stop these legal fictions. 

Let us be honest with each other and with the country ; let us 
defeat bills in a constitutional way, if we can, or not at all ; give 
freedom of debate, opportunity of amendment, the yea-and-nay vote, 
by which the judgment and will of every Representative can be ex- 
pressed and responsibility fixed where it belongs, and we will preserve 
our own self-respect, give force to the Constitution of the country 
we have sworn to obey, and serve the people whose trusts we hold. 
Why, this controversy is to determine whether a majority shall rule 
and govern, or be subject to the tyranny of a minority. Talk about 
the " tyranny of the majority " ; the tyranny of the minority is 
infinitely more odious and intolerable and more to be feared than 
that of the majority. The position of the gentlemen on the other 
side means that they will either rule or ruin, although they are in 



394 SPEECHES AND ADDRESSES OP WILLIAM McKINLEY. 

the minority. We insist that while we are in the majority they shall 
do neither. [Applause on the Eepublican side.] 

Mr. Caisp. If the gentleman has his majority here, he need not ask us to 

assist. 

" The gentleman " is not only entitled to have his own majority 
here, but he is entitled to have the legally elected Representatives of 
the people here, and here always. [Renewed applause.] 

Mr. Crisp. In the language of Mr. Blaine, I deny utterly that you have any 
right to say I shall be present or vote, except as the Constitution gives you the 
right to require my attendance. 

I know you deny it, and we are discussing whether that denial is 
right or wrong. That is the issue — whether it is true or whether it 
is false ; and the country and an enlightened public will settle the 
issue between us. I say we have settled one question — settled it, I 
trust, for all time ; settled it at a good deal of cost, it is true — that 
the minority can not ruin this Government ; and we intend, if we 
can, under the Constitution and the laws, in broad daylight and in 
the presence of 60,000,000 people, whose deliberate judgment we 
invite upon our acts to-day, to determine whether the constitutional 
majority legally chosen to this House shall do the business of this 
House. [Long-continued applause on the Republican side.] 



CIYII^SERYICE REFOEM. 

Speech in the House of Eepresentatives, Fifty-first 
Congress, April 24, 1890. 

[From the Congressional Eecord.li 

The Ilouse being in Committee of the Whole for the consideration of the bill 
(H. R. 9,006) making appropriations for the legislative, executive, and judicial 
expenses of the Government, Mr. McKinley said — 

Mr. Chairman : In the single moment that I have, I desire to 
say that I am opposed to the amendment of the gentleman from 
Tennessee to strike from this bill the appropriation for the execution 
of the civil-service law. My only regret is that the Committee on 
Appropriations did not give to the Commission all the appropriation 
that was asked for the improvement and extension of the system. If 
the Eepublican party of this country is pledged to any one thing 
more than another, it is to the maintenance of the civil-service law and 
its eflBcient execution ; not only that, but to its enlargement and its 
further application to the public service. 

The law that stands upon our statute-books to-day was put there 
by Republican votes. It was a Eepublican measure. Every National 
platform of the Eepublican party since its enactment has declared 
not only in favor of its continuance in full vigor, but in favor of its 
enlargement so as to apply more generally to the public service. And 
this, Mr. Chairman, is not alone the declaration and purpose of the 
Eepublican party, but it is in accord with its highest and best senti- 
ment — aye, more, it is sustained by the best sentiment of the whole 
country, Eepublican and Democratic alike. There is not a man on 
this floor who does not know that no party in this country. Demo- 
cratic or Eepublican, will have the courage to wipe it from the statute- 
book or amend it save in the direction of its improvement. 

Look at our situation to-day. When the Eepublican party has full 
control of all the branches of the Government it is proposed to annul 
this law of ours by withholding appropriations for its execution, when 
2G 



396 ^SPEECHES AND ADDRESSES OF WILLIAM McKINLEY. 

for four years under a Democratic administration nobody on this side 
of the House had the temerity to rise in his place and make a motion 
similar to the one now pending for the nullification of the law. We 
thought it was good then, good enough for a Democratic administra- 
tion ; and I say to my Republican associates it is good enough for a 
Eepublican administration ; it is good and wholesome for the whole 
country. If the law is not administered in letter and spirit impar- 
tially, the President can and will supply the remedy. 

Mr. Chairman, the Republican party must take no step backward. 
The merit system is here, and it is here to stay ; and we may just as 
well understand and accept it now, and give our attention to correct- 
ing the abuses, if any exist, and improving the law wherever it can 
be done to the advantage of the public service. 



THE TAEIFF OF 1890. 

Speech in the House of Eepkesektatives, Fifty-first 
Congress, May 7, 1890. 

[From the Congressional Record.'] 

The House being in Committee of the Whole, and having under considera- 
tion the bill (H. R. 9,416) to reduce the revenue and equalize duties on imports, 
Mr. McKiNLEY said — 

Mr. Chairman : I do not intend to enter upon any extended 
discussion of the two economic systems which divide parties in this 
House and the people tliroughout the country. For two years we 
have been occupied in both branches of Congress and in our dis- 
cussions before the people with these contending theories of taxation. 

At the first session of tlie Fiftieth Congress the House spent 
several weeks in an elaborate and exhaustive discussion of these sys- 
tems. The Senate was for as many weeks engaged in their investi- 
gation and in debate upon them, while in the political contest of 1888 
the tariff in all its phases was the absorbing question, made so by the 
political platforms of the respective parties, to the exclusion, prac- 
tically, of every other subject of party division. It may be said that 
from the December session of 1887-88 to March 4, 1889, no public 
question ever received, in Congress and out, such scrutinizing inves- 
\ tigation as that of the tariff. It has, therefore, seemed to me that 
any lengthy general discussion of these principles at this time, sO 
soon after their thorough consideration and determination by the 
people, is neither exi3ected, required, nor necessary. 

If any one thing was settled by the election of 1888, it was that 
the j)rotective policy, as promulgated in the Republican platform and 
heretofore inaugurated and maintained by the Republican party, 
should be secured in any fiscal legislation to be had by the Congress 
chosen in that great contest and upon that mastering issue. I have 
interpreted that victory to mean, and the majority in this House and 



398 SPEECHES AND ADDRESSES OF WILLIAM McKINLEY. 

in the Senate to mean, that a revision of the tariff is not only de- 
manded by the votes of the people, but that such revision should be 
on the line and in full recognition of the principle and purpose of 
protection. Tlie people have spoken ; they want their will registered 
and their decree embodied in public legislation. The bill which the 
Committee on Ways and Means have presented is their answer and 
interpretation of that victory and in accordance with its spirit and 
letter and purpose. We have not been compelled to abolish the 
internal-revenue system that we might preserve the protective sys- 
tem, which we were pledged to do in the event that the abolition of 
the one was essential to the preservation of the other. That was 
unnecessary. [Applause.] 

The bill does not amend or modify any part of the internal 
revenue taxes applicable to spirits or fermented liquors. It abolishes 
all the special taxes and licenses, so called, imposed upon the manu- 
facture of tobacco, cigars, and snuff, and dealers thereof, reduces the 
tax upon manufactured tobacco from eight to four cents per pound, 
and removes all restrictions now imposed upon the growers of to- 
bacco. With these exceptions the internal revenue laws are left 
undisturbed. From this source we reduce taxation over $70,000,000, 
and leave with the people this direct tax which has been paid by them 
upon their own products through a long series of years. 

The tariff part of the bill contemplates and proposes a complete 
revision. It not only changes the rates of duty, but modifies the gen- 
eral provisions of the law relating to the collection of duties. These 
modifications have received the approval of the Treasury Department 
and are set forth in detail in the report of the Committee, and I will 
not weary you by restating them. A few of the more important 
changes, however, deserve attention. 

There has been for many years a provision in the law permitting 
the United States to import for its use articles free of duty. Under 
this provision gross abuses have sprung up, and this exemption from 
duty granted the United States has served as an open doorway to 
frauds upon our revenue and unjustifiable discrimination against our 
own producers. Not only has the Government imported supplies 
from abroad, but its officers, agents, and contractors have been held 
to enjoy the same privileges, which have been exercised to the injury 
of our own citizens. The result has been that the supplies imported 
by contractors for Governmental work have, in many instances, been 
in excess of the demand for such public work, and been applied to 
other and different uses. This provision of law has been eliminated 



THE TARIFF OF 1890. 399 

in the proposed revision, and if approved by the House and Senate 
and the President, the Government, its officers, agents, and contract- 
ors, will hereafter have to pay the same duties which its citizens gen- 
erally are required to pay. Your Committee have been actuated in 
this by the belief that the Government should buy what it needs at 
home [applause] ; should give its ov/n citizens the advantage of sup- 
plying the United States with all its needed supjilies, and that the 
laws which it imposes upon its own people and taxj)ayers should be 
binding upon the Government itself. [Applause.] 

The Committee have also fixed a limit upon the amount and 
value of personal effects accompanying the passenger returning from 
foreign travel to $500. It has been too common for citizens of the 
United States visiting other countries to supply themselves not only 
for their immediate uses but for future uses and for the uses of their 
friends, and there has heretofore been no limit to the amount and 
value of foreign articles which could be brought in free of duty under 
the designation of " personal effects " if accompanied by the return- 
ing passenger. The practical effect of this provision was that the 
wealthy classes who were able to visit distant countries secured ex- 
emption from the payment of duties, while the average citizen unable 
to go abroad was compelled to pay a duty upon the articles which he 
might want to use. The limit of $500 is believed to be sufficient for 
all honest purposes. 

We have also introduced a new provision in the bill which re- 
quires that foreign merchandise imported into the United States shall 
be plainly stamped with the name of the country in which such arti- 
cles are manufactured. There has been a custom too general in some 
foreign countries to adopt American brands, to the injury of our own 
manufactures. Well-known articles of American production with 
high reputation have been copied by the foreigner, and then by the 
addition of the American brand or American marks have fraudulently 
displaced American manufactures, not in fair competition, but under 
false pretenses. The counterfeit has taken the place of the genuine 
article, and this we propose to stop. England has felt the injustice 
of fraudulent marking, and stringent laws have been enacted to pro- 
vide against false indications of origin abroad. I read an extract 
from the London Ironmonger of November 9, 1889, which fairly 
presents the opinions of English trade journals on fraudulent marks, 
as well as the action of the English Government : 

The response of our Colonies to the invitation of the home Government to 
legislate on the lines of the Merchandise Marks Act has been extremely satisfac- 



400 SPEECHES AND ADDRESSES OF WILLIAM McKINLEY. 

tory. Up to date many of the principal Colonies, including Canada and the Cape 
as well as India, have virtually adopted the imperial act, while in almost all the 
other Colonies legislation is either promised or has been already taken in hand. 
In the Crown Colonies the provisions of this act have been adopted as a matter of 
course. With two not very important exceptions, however, the principles of the 
primary measure have been adopted, or are likely to be adopted, throughout the 
whole "of the British Empire; consequently to that extent honest trading has 
received a well-deserved impetus and fraudulent marking an equally well-merited 
check. This is a matter for sincere congratulation all around, and if the various 
Australian Colonies and New Zealand can see their way to pushing forward rap- 
idly their proposed enactments the results will be all the more satisfactory to all 
concerned. 

Section forty-nine of the bill provides that goods, wares, and mer- 
chandise, and all articles manufactured in whole or in part in any 
foreign country by convict labor, shall not be entitled to entry at any 
of the ports of the United States, and the importation thereof is pro- 
hibited. Nearly if not all of the States of the Union have laws to 
prevent the products of convict labor in the State penitentiaries from 
coming into competition with the products of the free labor of such 
States. The Committee believed that the free labor of this country 
should be saved from the convict labor of other countries, as it has 
been from the convict labor of our own States, and so recommend 
this provision. It would be of small account to protect our workmen 
against our own convict labor and still admit the convict-made prod- 
ucts of the world to free competition with the products of our free 
labor. 

By way of encouraging exportation to other countries and extend- 
ing our markets, the Committee have liberalized the drawbacks given 
upon articles or products imported from abroad and used in manu- 
factories here for the export trade. Existing law refunds 90 per cent 
of the duties collected upon foreign materials made into the finished 
product at hgme and exported abroad, while the proposed bill will 
refund 99 per cent of said duties, giving to our citizens engaged in 
this business 9 per cent, additional encouragement, the Government 
only retaining 1 per cent for the expense of handling. We have also 
extended the drawback provision to apply to all articles imported 
which may be finished here for use in the foreign market. Hereto- 
fore this privilege was limited. This, it is believed, will effectually 
dispose of the argument so often made, that our tariff on raw mate- 
rials, so called, confines our own producers to their own market and 
prevents them from entering the foreign market, and will furnish 
every opportunity to those of our citizens desiring it to engage in the 



THE TARIFF OF 1890. 401 

foreign trade, Xow, the bill proposes that the American citizen may 
import any product he desires, manufacture it into the finished ar- 
ticle, using in part, if necessary, in such manufacture domestic mate- 
rials, and when the completed product is entered for export it refunds 
to him within 1 per cent of all the duty he paid upon his imported ma- 
terials. That is, we give to the capital and labor of this country sub- 
stantially free trade in all foreign materials for use in the markets of 
the world. We do not require that the product shall be made wholly 
of the foreign material. Already, under special provisions of laws 
and regulations of the Treasury Department, parts of the finished 
product made here and attached to the completed article does not de- 
prive the exporter of his drawback. We have extended this provision 
and in every way possible liberalized it, so that the domestic and for- 
eign product may be combined and still allow to the exporter 99 
per cent upon the duty he pays upon his foreign material intended for 
export ; which is, in effect, what free-traders and our political oppo- 
nents are clamoring for, namely, " free raw material for the foreign 
trade." And if you are desirous of seeing what you can do in the 
way of entering the foreign market, here is the opportunity for you. 
[Applause on the Eepublican side.] 

In the same direction, by section twenty-three, we have made 
manufacturing establishments engaged in smelting or refining metals 
in the United States bonded Avarehouses under such regulations as 
the Secretary of the Treasury may prescribe ; and we have provided 
that metals in any crude form requiring smelting or refining to make 
them available in the arts, imported into the United States to be 
smelted or refined and intended for export in a refined state, shall be 
exempt from the payment of duties. This, it is believed, will en- 
courage smelting and refining of foreign materials in the United 
States and build up large industries upon the seacoast and elsewhere, 
which will make an increased demand for the labor of the country. 
If the provision be adopted, it completely disposes of what has some- 
times seemed to be an almost unanswerable argument that has been 
presented by our friends on the other side, that if we only had free 
raw material we could go out and capture the markets of the world. 
We give them now within 1 per cent of free raw material, and invite 
them to go out and capture those markets. [Applause.] 

Mr. Springer. Will the gentleman permit me to ask if that also applies to 
wool ? 

Yes ; it applies to anything which they choose to import for pur- 
poses of manufacture. If my friend wants to engage in the manufac- 



402 SPEECHES AND ADDRESSES OF WILLIAM McKlNLEY. 

ture of cloth, and he wants free wool, he can get within 1 per cent of 
his free wool and engage in the manufacture under this provision of 
the law, and the entire export trade is open to him if he thinks the 
foreign market better than the home market. These are all of the 
general provisions of the bill to which I desire to call the attention 
of the Committee at the present time. 

It is asserted in the views of the minority, submitted with the re- 
port accompanying this bill, that the operation of the bill will not 
diminish the revenues of the Government ; that with the increased 
duties we have imposed upon foreign articles which may be sent to 
market here we have increased taxation, and that therefore instead of 
being a diminution of the revenues of the Government there will be 
an increase in the sum of $50,000,000 or 160,000,000. Now, that 
statement is entirely misleading. It can only be accepted upon the 
assumption that the importation of the present year under this bill, 
if it becomes a law, will be equal to the importations of like articles 
under the existing law ; and there is not a member of the Committee 
on Ways and Means, there is not a member of the minority of that 
Committee, there is not a member of the House on either side, who 
does not know that the very instant that you have increased the 
duties to a fair protective point, putting them above the highest rev- 
enue point, that very instant you diminish importations and to that 
extent diminish the revenue. Nobody can well dispute this propo- 
sition. Why, when the Senate bill was under consideration by the 
Committee on Ways and Means, over which my friend from Texas 
presided in the last Congress, the distinguished Chairman of that 
Committee [Mr. Mills] wrote a letter to Secretary Fairchild inquiring 
what would be the effect of increased duties proposed under the Sen- 
ate bill, and this is Mr. Fairchild's reply : 

Where the rates upon articles successfully produced here are materially in- 
creased, it is fair to assume that the imports of such articles would decrease and 
the revenue therefrom diminish. 

He further states that where the rate upon an article is so in- 
creased as to deprive the foreign producer of the power to compete 
with the domestic producer, the revenue from that source will cease 
altogether. Secretary Fairchild only states what has been the uni- 
versal experience in the United States wherever increase of duties 
above the revenue point has been made upon articles which we can 
produce in the United States. Therefore, it is safe to assume that 
no increase of the revenues, taking the bill through, will arise from 



THE TARIFF OF 1890. 403 

the articles upon which duties have been advanced. Now as to the 
schedules. 

The bill recommends the retention of the present rates of duty on 
earthen and china ware. No other industry in the United States 
either requires or deserves the fostering care of Government more 
than this one. It is a business requiring technical and artistic knowl- 
edge, and the most careful attention to the many and delicate pro- 
cesses through which the raw material must pass to the completed 
product. For many years, down to 1863, the pottery industry of the 
United States had very little or no success and made but slight prog- 
ress in a practical and commercial way. At the close of the low-tariff 
period of 18G0 there was but one pottery in the United States, with two 
small kilns. There were no decorating kilns at that time. In 1873, 
encouraged by the tariff and the gold premium, which was an added 
protection, we had increased to 20 potteries, with G8 kilns, but still no 
decorating kilns. The capital invested was $1,020,000, and the value 
of the product was 11,180,000. In 1882 there were 55 potteries, 244 
kilns, 26 decorating kilns, with a capital invested of 15,076,000, and 
an annual product of $5,299,140. The wages paid in the potteries in 
1882 were $2,387,000, and the number of employes engaged therein 
7,000 ; the ratio of wages to sales in 1882 was 45 per cent. In 
1889 there were 80 potteries, 401 kilns, and decorating kilns had in- 
creased from 26 in 1822 to 188 in 1889. The capital invested in the 
latter year was $10,597,357, the value of the product was $10,389,- 
910 ; amount paid in wages, $6,265,224, and the number of em- 
ployes engaged, 16,900. The ratio of wages to sales was 60 per cent 
of decorated ware and 50 per cent of white ware. The j)er cent of 
wages to value of product, it will be observed, has advanced from 45 
per cent in 1882 to 60 per cent in 1889. This increase is not due, 
as might be supposed, to an advance in wages, but results in a reduc- 
tion in the selling price of the product and the immense increase in 
sales of decorated ware in which labor enters in greater proportion to 
materials. The total importation for 1874 and 1875 of earthenware 
t was to the value of $4,441,216, and in 1888 and 1889 it ran up to 
f $6,476,190. The American ware produced in 1889 was valued at 
$10,389,910. The difference between the wages of labor in this coun- 
try and competing countries in the manufacture of earthenware is 
fully 100 per cent. 

When the law was enacted in 1883, I asserted on this floor that 

I if the duty of 55 per cent and 60 per cent was given as recommended 

by the bill then pending, in less than five years the quality of Ameri- 



404 SPEECHES AND ADDRESSES OF WILLIAM McKINLEY. 

can ware would be improved, tlie quantity increased, and the price 
to the consumer sensibly diminished. That prophecy, Mr. Chairman, 
has been fully verified. In 1883 an assorted crate of ware sold for 
157.89, and the same, only a better -ware, is now sold for $46.30. In 
1864 we paid for the same crate of ware 1310.75. On decorated ware 
the immense benefit to the consumer is even more apparent. The 
selling price of all decorated ware was from 50 to 100 per cent higher 
in 1883 than in 1890. In 1853, with the low revenue-tariff duty of 
34 per cent and no domestic manufactures, an assorted crate of white 
ware sold at 195.30 ; in 1890, with the 55 per cent duty and domestic 
competition, with large potteries which are the pride of the country, 
employing labor and capital at home, buying our own raw material, 
the same assorted crate is selling for $46.30. The duty, I submit, 
ought to be higher even than that proposed in the bill. 

We have recommended an increase of duties upon glassware. 
Since the tariff act of 1883, by which duties were reduced, importa- 
tions from the other side have been constantly increasing, and as a 
result our own workmen have not been employed at full time. Our 
sharpest competition comes from Belgium, where labor, both skilled 
and unskilled, is much lower than in the United States. There they 
work seven days in every week. It will appear that the cost of labor 
in Germany may be set down at one third of the cost in the United 
States ; that of Great Britain at five eigliths, and that of France at a 
medium between Germany and Great Britain. The American Flint 
Glass Workers' Union, through Mr. William J. Smith, their president, 
stated before the Ways and Means Committee that this large differ- 
ence in the cost of labor between foreign countries and the United 
States makes it impossible for the home product to compete with the 
foreign-made goods in the market of the United States under the 
present duty, and that to maintain the present rate of wages an in- 
crease of duty is demanded. 

Among others who appeared before the Committee touching the 
glass schedule was Mr. George A. Macbeth, of Pittsburg, a manu- 
facturer of lamp glasses, globes, and chimneys. He argued in favor 
of lower duties and free raw material, and I believe was the only 
gentleman who appeared in that behalf. The following I quote from 
the hearings : 

The Chairman. If we remove the duty on what you call raw material, and 
then remove the duty from the finished articles, would the consumer get his chim- 
neys any cheaper ? 

Mr. Macbeth. Yes, sir. 



THE TARIFF OF 1800. 405 

The Chairman. How much? 

Mr. Macbeth. As near as I can figure it out it would be $650 a week on my 
product. 

The Chairman. Sis hundred and fifty dollars a week would represent how 
much on each chimney ? 

Mr. Macbeth. 1 do not know exactly. 

The CHAiRjrAN. Suppose we took the duty off the raw material, 45 per cent, 
how much would the consumer be benefited? Would he be benefited to the 
amount of the duty, by less or by more ? 

Mr. Macbeth. I could not state exactly. 

The Chairman. You are here asking for free raw material. If we take the 
duty off all raw material and then the duty off the finished product, what I want 
to know is, what benefit the American consumer would get in the reduced price 
of the finished product ? 

Mr. Macbeth. He would get just about the amount I stated. 

The Chairman. How much would that be f How much off the present price 
of the chimney? 

Mr. Macbeth. I do not know that I could state the exact amount per dozen. 

The Chairman. I am not talking about a week's product. You understand 
the business. You have visited Germany and other points for the purpose of in- 
vestigating these matters, and you are here asking us to give you free raw mate- 
rial, and I want to know what would be the reduced cost to the consumer on your 
goods if we took off the duty. 

Mr. Macbeth. In dollars and cents it is $650 a week. 

The Chairman. What I want to know is, what chimneys would cost the 
consumer? 

Mr. Macbeth. Chimneys now costing say 25 cents by the dozen ? 

Mr. Bayne. Take the dozen chimneys now sold at 25 cents, how much would 
the consumer get a dozen chimneys for if the duties were taken off ? 

Mr. Macbeth. You ask me to make figures. (After figuring.) The reduced 
cost would be about 3 or 4 cents a dozen on that kind, one fourth of a cent on 
each chimney. 

Mr, Bayne. Only 3 or 4 cents a dozen ? 

Mr. Gear. When a man or woman would go to a retailer and buy a chimney 
for a lamp would he or she get the benefit of that ? 

Mr. Macbeth. My individual opinion is he might not. 

This is a frank admission and of great value at this time, showing 
clearly that even with free raw materials and reduced duties there 
would be no benefit accruing to the consumer, but increased profits 
would go to the manufacturers and middlemen. From a statement 
made by the President of the Window Glass Workers' Association, 
himself a workman, prepared by himself after the most careful per- 
sonal investigation, we find the best evidence of the necessity for these 
increased duties. 

The agricultural condition of the country has received the careful 
attention of the Committee, and every remedy which was believed to 



406 SPEECHES AND ADDRESSES OF WILLIAM McKINLEY. 

be within the power of tariff legislation to give has been granted by 
this bill. The depression in agriculture is not confined to the United 
States. The reports of the Agricultural Department indicate that 
this distress is general ; that Great Britain, France, and Germany are 
suffering in a larger degree than the farmers of the United States. 
Mr. Dodge, statistician of the Department, says, in his report of 
March, 1890, that the depression in agriculture in Great Britain has 
probably been more severe than that of any other nation; which 
would indicate that it is gi'eater even in a country whose economic 
system differs from ours, and that this condition is inseparable from 
any fiscal system, and less under the protective than the revenue 
tariff system. 

It has been asserted in the views of the minority that the duty 
put upon wheat and other agricultural products would be of no value 
to the agriculturists of the United States. The Committee, believing 
differently, have advanced the duty upon these products. As we are 
the greatest wheat-producing country of the world, it is habitually 
asserted and believed by many that this product is safe from foreign 
competition. We do not appreciate that while the United States last 
year raised 490,000,000 bushels of wheat, France raised 316,000,000 
bushels, Italy raised 103,000,000 bushels, Eussia 189,000,000 bushels, 
and India 243,000,000 bushels, and that the total production of Asia, 
including Asia Minor, Persia, and Syria, amounted to over 315,000,000 
bushels. Our sharpest competition comes from Eussia and India, 
and the increased product of other nations only serves to increase 
the world's supply, and diminish proportionately the demand for 
ours ; and if we will only reflect on the difference between the cost of 
labor in producing wheat in the United States and in competing 
countries we will readily perceive how near we are to the danger line, 
if indeed we have not quite reached it, so far even as our own markets 
are concerned. 

The cost of farm labor in Great Britain, estimated by the statisti- 
cian of the Agricultural Department, is 1150 per annum ; in France, 
$125 ; in Holland and Austria, $100 ; in Germany, $90 ; in Eussia, 
160 ; in Italy, 150 ; and in India, $30, while the same labor costs in 
this country $220. The farmers of the United States have therefore 
come to appreciate that with the wonderful wheat development in 
India and Eussia, with the vast sums of money which have been ex- 
pended for irrigation and in railroads for transporting this wheat, 
taken in connection with their cheap labor, the time is already here 
when the American farmer must sell his product in the markets of 



THE TARIFF OF 1890. 407 

the world in competition with the wheat produced by the lowest- 
priced labor of other countries, and that his care and concern must in 
the future be to preserve his home market, for he must of necessity 
be driven from the foreign one, unless by diminishing the cost of his 
production he can successfully compete with the unequal conditions 
I have described. Now as to other products of agriculture. 

During the last year Canada exported to the United States eggs 
to the value of $2,159,725; horses, $2,113,782; sheep, 1918,334; 
poultry, $110,793 ; wool, 1216,918 ; barley, $6,454,603 ; beans, $435,- 
534 ; hay, $822,381 ; malt, $105,183 ; potatoes, $192,576 ; planks and 
boards, $7,187,101. There were exported of fish of various kinds, 
lumber, and other commodities, to the amount of at least $20,000,000 
more. The increase of our importations in agricultural products has 
risen from $40,000,000 in 1850 to $256,000,000 in 1889. We imported 
in the last ten years more than $60,000,000 worth of horses, cattle, 
and sheep. "We imported tobacco from the Netherlands for the six 
months ending December 31, 1889, to the value of $5,000,000. The 
countries exporting agricultural products here do not view the in- 
crease of duties proposed in this bill upon agricultural products in 
the same light as do the gentlemen of the minority and those who 
oppose this bill. 

Prof. Gold win Smith, a Canadian and political economist, speak- 
ing of the Canadian farmers and the effect of this bill upon their in- 
terests, says : 

They will be very much injured if the McKinley Bill shall be adopted. The 
agricultural schedule will bear very hardly on the Canadian farmers who particu- 
larly desire to find a market in the United States for their eggs, their barley, and 
their horses. The European market is of little value to them for their horses. 
If there shall be a slow market in England all the profits will be consumed on 
a cargo of horses and great loss will entail. I do not see how the Canadian 
farmers can export their produce to the United States if the McKinley Bill shall 
become a law. 

If that be true, Mr. Chairman, then the annual exports of about 
$25,000,000 in agricultural products will be supplied to the people of 
the United States by the American farmer rather than by the Cana- 
dian farmer ; and who will say that $25,000,000 of additional demand 
for American agricultural products will not inure to the benefit of the 
American farmer ; and that $25,000,000 distributed among our own 
farmers will not relieve some of the depression now prevailing, and 
give to the farmer confidence and increased ability to lift the mort- 
gages from his lands? [Applause.] 



408 SPEECHES AND ADDRESSES OF WILLIAM McKINLEY. 



The Hon. Mr. Charlton, a member of the Canadian Parliament, 
in a speech delivered March 28, 1890, in s^Deaking of the bill now 
before this House, after referring to the large trade which the Cana- 
dian farmer has with the United States, and contrasting it with the 
small trade he has with England, says : 

Upon this vast volume of exports our direct interests led us to desire that the 
duties might be removed, for if the duties were removed that market would be bet- 
ter, the prices would be higher, and the prosperity of the country would be greater. 
Our trade with the United States is greater than with any other country, greater 
than with England, although we enter the English markets without any custom- 
house restrictions, while in the United States markets the vexatious restrictions 
are calculated to reduce trade. Now, to show what would be the effect of reci- 
procity on our trade, let me for one moment refer to the result of the reciprocal 
trade relations which obtained from 1854 to 1866. Our exports to the United 
States in the first year after reciprocity amounted to $10,473,000, while in the last 
year of reciprocity they amounted to $39,950,000, an increase of 280 per cent in 
eleven years ; and now, twenty-three years after, our exports to the United States 
have only risen to $45,500,000, an increase of only about $5,500,000 in the twenty- 
three years, against an increase of nearly $30,000,000 in eleven years under reci- 
procity (or free trade). These figures tell their own story ; there can be no doubt 
what the result of reciprocity of trade between these two countries would be. 

Mr. Chairman, the same condition has been true as to every 
agreement of reciprocity we have ever had with any nation of the 
world. We have been beaten in every instance. From 1854 to 1866 
— twelve years of reciprocity with Canada — we bought of them twice 
as much as they bought of us ; 95 per cent of their products came 
into the United States free of duty, while only 42 per cent of ours 
went into Canada free of duty. Mr. Chairman, what these other 
countries want is a free and open market with the United States. 
What we want, if we ever have reciprocity, must be reciprocity with 
equality, reciprocity that shall be fair, reciprocity that shall be just, 
reciprocity that shall give us our share in the trade or arrangement 
that we make with the other nations of the world. It will be seen, 
"Air. Chairman, that wherever we have tried reciprocity or low duties 
we have always been the loser. But I am not going to discuss 
reciprocity or the propriety of treaties and commercial arrange- 
ments. I leave that to the illustrious man who presides over the 
State Department vmder this administration [Secretary Blaine] and 
to my distinguished friend, the Chairman of the Committee on For- 
eign Affairs of this House [Mr. Hitt]. This is a domestic bill ; it is 
not a foreign bill. [Applause on the Republican side.] 

The Committee, then, Mr. Chairman, have in the interest of ag- 



fii**^- 



THE TARIFF OF 1890. 409 

riculture recommended an increase of duty in the wool schedule. 
The present rate of duty on first-class wool is 10 cents per pound, 
and upon second-class 12 cents per pound. We have recommended 
in this bill that the duty on first-class wool shall be increased from 
10 cents to 11 cents a pound, and that the duty now fixed on second- 
class wools shall remain as at present. On third-class wool the pres- 
ent rate of duty is 2^ cents per pound upon all wool costing under 12 
cents, and 5 cents a pound on wools costing above 12 cents. The 
Committee on Ways and Means will offer an amendment when this 
schedule is reached, providing that on carpet wools the dividing line 
shall be changed from 12 to 13 cents, and that the duty on wool 
under 13 cents, commonly known as carpet wool, shall be 32 per cent 
ad valorem, and above 13 cents per pound shall be 50 per cent ad 
valorem. It will be noted that we make on first-class wool an in- 
crease of 1 cent a pound, and that the existing rate on second-class 
wool is maintained, while the proposed ad valorem rate will raise the 
duty on carpet wools of certain grades according to the necessity. 
If there is any one industry which appeals with more force than 
another for defensive duties it is this, and to no class of our citizens 
should this House more cheerfully lend legislative assistance, Avhere it 
can properly be done, than to the million farmers who own sheep in 
the United States. We can not afford as a Nation to permit this in- 
dustry to be longer crippled. It is also to be noted, Mr. Chairman, 
that having increased the duties on wools we have also increased the 
duties on the product — the manufactures of wool — to compensate for 
the increased duty on the raw material. 

In the metal schedule, which is probably the schedule in which 
the country is as deeply interested as any other — in the metal sched- 
ule, starting out at the very foundation, iron ore, we have left the 
duty on that precisely as it exists under the present law, namely, 75 
cents per ton, and we left it at the same duty which was proposed by 
my distinguished friend from Texas [Mr, Mills] in the bill which he 
presented to the last Congress. The same is also true of coal. Pyrites 
or sulphuret of iron, containing in excess of 25 jDer cent of sulphur, 
has been put upon the free list. Pig iron, scrap iron, and steel we 
have left at 16.72 a ton, the present duty, while the Mills bill made 
it $G per ton. On bar iron the difference between the proposed bill 
and the Mills bill is one tenth of 1 cent per pound. On round iron 
not less than three fourths of an inch in diameter the present duty 
is 1 cent per pound ; the Mills bill retained it at that rate, and the 
present bill reduces the duty to nine tenths of 1 cent per pound. On 



410 SPEECHES AND ADDRESSES OF WILLIAM McKINLEY. 

cast-iron pipe the existing law is 1 cent per pound ; we have reduced 
it to nine tenths of 1 cent per pound, and the Mills bill reduced it to 
six tenths of 1 cent per pound. Beams, girders, joists, angles, etc., 
present duty 1^- cents per pound ; the Senate bill fixed the duty at 1 
cent per pound, the Mills bill at six tenths of 1 cent per pound, and 
the present bill puts it at nine tenths of 1 cent per pound. Forgings 
of iron and steel : Existing law, 2^ cents per pound ; Mills bill, 2^ 
cents per pound ; proposed bill, 2.3 cents per pound. Hoop iron : 
Existing law, 1 cent per pound, 1.2 cents per pound, 1.4 cents per 
pound ; Mills bill, 1 cent per pound, 1.2 cents per pound, 1.3 cents 
per pound ; proposed bill, 1 cent per pound, 1.1 cents per pound, 1.3 
cents per pound. Railway bars, steel rails : Present duty, $17 per 
ton ; Mills bill, ^11 ; Senate bill, $15.68 ; present bill, $13.44, or 12.44 
in excess of what the Mills bill proposed, and $2.24 less than the 
Senate bill. Sheets of iron or steel : Present law, 1.1 cents per 
pound, 1.2 cents per pound, 1.4 cents per pound ; Mills bill, 1 cent 
per pound, 1.1 cents per pound, 1^ cents per pound ; proposed 
bill, 1 cent per pound, 1.1 cents per pound, 1.4 cents per pound. 
Corrugated or crimped: Present law, 1.4 cents per pound; Mills bill, 
1.4 cents per pound ; proposed bill, 1.4 cents per pound. Sheet iron 
and sheet steel : Present law, 2^ cents per pound ; Mills bill, 2-| cents 
per pound ; proposed bill, 2^ cents per pound. Pickled or cleaned 
by acid : Present law, 1.35 ; Mills bill, 1.35 ; proposed bill, 1.35. Cut 
nails : Present law, 1^ cents per pound ; Mills bill, 1 cent per pound ; 
proposed bill, 1 cent per pound. Chains : Present law. If cents per 
pound, 2 cents per pound, 2^ cents per pound ; Mills bill, 1^ cents, 
1^ cents, 2 cents per pound ; proposed bill, 1.6 cents, 1.8 cents, 2| 
cents per pound. Thus, ^Mr. Chairman, I have hurriedly gone through 
with the metal schedule, from which it appears that we have made 
substantial reductions wherever it could be safely done. 

Mr. Henderson, of Iowa. What change, if any, is made in fence wire? 

We leave it at six tenths of one cent a pound, which is the same 
duty as is provided by existing law. 

Mr. Henderson, of Iowa. The same as the present law. What was it under 
the Mills bill? 

The same ; and also the same in the Senate bill. 

Now, Mr. Chairman, the important part of the metal schedule, 
and that which will probably be most harshly assailed, is that pro- 
posed in connection with the duty on tin plate. The bill proposes to 
advance the duty from one cent per pound, the present rate, to 1.85 



THE TARIFF OF 1890. 411 

and 2.15 cents per pound, varying according to gauge. The existing 
tariff presents tlie anomaly of placing a higher duty upon the sheet 
iron and steel which constitute the chief element in the production 
of tin plate than upon the tin plate itself, which is a manifest wrong 
demanding correction, independent of the question of encouraging 
the manufacture of tin plate in the United States. 

The duty recommended in the bill is not alone to correct this 
inequality, but to make the duty on foreign tin plate high enough to 
insure its manufacture in this country to the extent of our home 
consumption. The only reason we are not doing it now and have not 
been able to do it in the past is because of inadequate duties. We have 
demonstrated our ability to make it here as successfully as they do in 
Wales. We have already made it here. Two factories were engaged 
in producing tin plate in the years 1873, 1874, and 1875, but no sooner 
had they got fairly under way than the foreign manufacturer reduced 
his price to a point which made it impossible for our manufacturers 
to continue. When our people embarked in the business foreign tin 
plate was selling for $12 per box, and to crush them out, before they 
were firmly established, the price was brought down to 14.50 per 
box ; but it did not remain there. When the fires were put out in 
the American mills, and its manufacture thought by the foreigners 
to be abandoned, the price of tin plate advanced, until in 1879 it was 
selling for 19 and 110 a box. Our people again tried it, and again 
the prices were depressed, and again our people abandoned tempora- 
rily the enterprise, and as a gentleman stated before the Committee, 
twice they have lost their whole investment through the combination 
of the foreign manufacturers in striking down the prices, not for the 
benefit of the consumer, but to drive our manufacturers from the 
business ; and this would be followed by an advance within six 
months after our mills were shut down. 

We propose this advanced duty to protect our manufacturers and 
consumers against the British monopoly, in the belief that it will 
defend our capital and labor in the production of tin plate until they 
shall establish an industry which the English will recognize has come 
to stay, and then competition will insure regular and reasonable 
prices to consumers. It may add a little temporarily to the cost of 
tin plate to the consumer, but will eventuate in steadier and more 
satisfactory prices. At the present prices for foreign tin plate, the 
proposed duty would not add anything to the cost of the heavier 
grades of tin to the consumer. If the entire duty was added to the 
cost of the can it would not advance it more than one third or one 



412 SPEECHES AND ADDRESSES OP WILLIAM McKINLEY. 

half of one cent, for on a dozen fruit cans the addition would prop- 
erly only be about three cents. 

Mr. Cronemeyer said before the Committee : 

After we get fifty mills in this country and exchange our ideas, we can re- 
duce the price by the use of improved machinery and methods which they never 
thought of in the other countries. 

We consumed last year 300,000 tons of tin plate, all of it im- 
ported, upon which we paid 17,000,000 duty, every dollar of which 
was paid by the consumer, for it is a revenue tariff, and there was no 
competition at home to influence or regulate the prices. The price 
of tin plate to the American consumer for the last twenty-four years 
has been the foreign price fixed by the foreign producer with the 
American duty added, and every dollar of that duty has been paid 
by the canners and by the consumers in every form, small and great. 

Mr. Gear. Controlled by a syndicate. 

Yes, as my friend suggests, they are controlled by a syndicate. 
They put the price up and they put the price down according to the 
will of those who belong to the combine. Why, the very agitation, 
the very suggestion that we proposed to increase the duty on tin 
plate has already crushed out one foreign combine, one foreign trust, 
and it will stay crushed out until the political complexion of this 
House shall change and this duty shall be reduced, for I assume we 
are going to advance the duty upon tin plate. [Applause.] 

We have now four mills which can be at once adapted to making 
tin plate. They can produce about 4,000 tons a year. It would 
require ninety mills of the dimensions of those now here to make 
the tin plate used in our country, and it would require over 23,000 
men to be employed directly in this industry. But the benefits 
would not stop there. The additional labor in mining the coal and 
ores, in producing the pig metal, the lead, the tin, the lumber for 
boxing, and the sulphuric acid, would furnish labor to 50,000 work- 
men and bring support to 200,000 people. The capital required 
would be above $30,000,000. I know no more certain and encourag- 
ing field for labor and capital than is here presented. We have not 
hesitated, therefore, to recommend the advanced duty. 

The foreign manufacturers fear this proposed duty and will spare 
no effort or cost to prevent its adoption. They have the monopoly 
now ; they want to perpetuate it. They have a trust and combine ; 
we propose by this duty to break and destroy it. We want to develop 
our tin mines in the Black Hills ; they want these treasures to sleep. 



THE TARIFF OF 1890. 413 

We want to extend our manufacturing supremacy ; they want to 
check it. Already they are at work to defeat this bill. Let me read 
you from English authority, the London Ironmonger of August 10th : 

The efforts which are being made in the United States to familiarize the 
people of that coimtry with the idea that tin plates can and should be manu- 
factured there are well worthy the sustained attention of the manufacturers 
of South Wales and England. The promoters of the homemade plan are ex- 
ceedingly pertinacious, and are leaving no effort untried in oi'der to achieve 
success. At an exhibition to be held at Pittsburg this autumn the process of 
manufacture is to be carried on in a practical manner, a sum of nearly £1,000 
being expected to be laid out on the plant for the purpose. It is anticipated, by 
thus interesting the American public and showing " how simple the business is," 
the way will be made easier for pushing a bill through Congress next session, 
having for its object the imposition of much heavier duties upon imported tin 
plates. Should this scheme succeed, then there is no doubt that a great deal of 
American capital will be promptly embarked in the business, and sooner or later 
the tin-plate trade will cease to be a monopoly of South Wales and Monmouth- 
shire. Nevertheless, we see no reason why the manufacturers of tin plates in this 
country need grow disheartened or despondent. They have the advantages of 
possession, position for shipment, trained labor, and all materials on the spot. 
These are very important points ; but, in addition, the Welsh makers have strong 
allies in the United States, and, if the alliance is made the most of, we should 
have very considerable doubts of the success of any application to Congress to 
increase the present duties. 

Who their American allies are I know not. 

But to insure that result the Welsh makers and their business connections 
must not only watch, but work, and work hard, to checkmate the advances of 
the American ultra-protectionists. 

The London Iron and Steel Trades Journal of the 12th instant 
makes the very significant admission italicized in the succeeding 
quotation : 

The most important item in the proposed new schedule is that affecting tin 
plates. The duty is now 1 cent per pound, and the suggested tariff is 2 cents and 
2.10 cents per pound. If this is carried, the occupation of three fourths of those 
engaged in the tin-plate trade will begone, and our manufacturers and their work- 
men if they continue in the business must employ their capital and experience on 
the other side of the Atlantic. [Applause.] The great obstacle to tin-plate mak- 
ing on a large scale in the States is the entire absence of cheap female labor, so 
necessary in the industry, and so abimdant in Wales. — 

We do not have cheap female labor here under the protective sys- 
tem. I thank God for that. [Applause.] 

But if the enormous duty of 12 shillings a box is adopted possibly the labor diflB- 
culty may be got over. Until the bill is actually passed wc shall continue to 
believe that the people of America will refuse to impose upon the consumers of 



414 SPEECHES AND ADDRESSES OP WILLIAM McKINLEY, 

tin plates this enormous tax. Tin plates can not 'possibly be made in the States 
so cheaply as they can be in this country. The existing duty is ample proof of 
this ; and to abolish the duty entirely would be more appropriate than to in- 
crease it. 

Let them bring their factories right over here. Bring $25,000,000 
over here and sit down among us and employ our labor and consume 
the products of our farmers. [Applause.] 

The tinned-plate manufacturers of Wales have been urged by some of their 
number to enter into a combination to shut down their mills for the purpose of 
curtailing production and advancing prices. The matter seems to have met with 
quite general acceptance by all the firms but the South Wales Tinned Plate Com- 
pany. The managing partner of the firm, J, H. Rodgers, addressed his workmen 
on the subject and opposed the move. His speech, as reported in the Cardiff 
Echo of March 3d, contains the following allusions to the American tariff question, 
and is of interest : " A year ago the protectionist party in the United States, for 
the first time in many years, was able to get a bill passed by the Senate more than 
doubling the duty on imported tinned plates, with the object of enabling the steel 
makers of America to manufacture plates profitably and to exclude those made in 
this country. The House of Representatives threw out the bill, but now the pro- 
tectionist party is in a majority in the lower House, so that those in America who 
are endeavoring to prevent the duty on tinned plates being raised have a more 
difficult battle to fight than they had a year ago, and those among us who are 
trying to form a combination to close all tinned-plate works in Wales for a time, 
if successful, would simply succeed in arming our opponents with the strongest 
weapons of attack." He then stated that the forming of a combination to shut 
down the tinned-plate works would be but a fulfillment of the prophecies of the 
protectionists, and he regarded it as eminently unwise and hazardous. Continuing, 
he is quoted : " I could give you further evidence to prove how undesirable and 
how dangerous any combination would be to oblige the Americans to pay higher 
prices for plates. The total exports of tin boxes and terne plates last year were 
7,400,000. Of these the United States took 5,500,000 boxes. Consider what would 
be the result to all of us here if the United States should make her own plates, as 
she now makes her own steel rails, pig iron, etc., which not many years ago were 
all made in this country. Some tell us that if such a state of things comes about 
we must find new markets ; but where are we to find them ? And if they are found, 
why do not the owners of the works that are now idle for want of orders seek them 
out and open up business with them ? It seems to me that the first results would 
be that tin plate makers would have to reduce the cost of manufacture to meet the 
increased duty. As far as I can see at present the only direction in which the cost 
could be reduced would be in labor." 

Mr. Henderson, of Iowa. Before the gentleman leaves the subject of tin 
plate I will ask him to yield for a question. 

Certainly. 

Mr. Henderson, of Iowa. I wish to ask the gentleman, first, whether the Com- 
mittee on Ways and Means has any information as to this country having the tin 
ore for the manufacture of tin plate ; secondly, whether or not England produces 



THE TARIFF OF 1890. 415 

tin ore herself or whether she imports it ; and third, whether or not, if we have 
not the tin ore in this country, we can afford to put on this duty, and import the 
ore and manufacture the tin plate ourselves, as, in the main, they do in England ? 

I will say to the gentleman from Iowa [Mr. Henderson] that 
the best information the Committee on Ways and Means have upon 
that subject is that we have plenty of tin ore in the Black Hills 
country, in the Dakotas, and that important discoveries of tin have 
recently been made in northwestern "Wyoming. 

Mr. Kerr, of Iowa. And we have it in Virginia also. 

I am told by the gentleman from Iowa [Mr. Kerr] that we also 
have tin ore in Virginia, but the best testimony before us is that 
we have it in the largest quantities in the Dakotas. I remember 
that the gentleman from New York [Mr. Cummings], upon a visit 
which he made to that region, wrote some most interesting letters to 
the New York Sun upon this subject, showing, as he thought con- 
clusively, that all the Black Hills awaited was the pick of the miner 
to develop this hidden treasure. But even if we had no tin ore in 
this country, I say to the gentleman from Iowa [Mr. Henderson] 
that pig tin is absolutely free ; there is no duty upon it ; it is on the 
free list, and we can import it from any part of the world. We can 
import it from Wales, from Australia, from the Straits of Malacca, 
from any place where it is produced. 

Mr. NiEDEiNGHAUS. And as cheap as England can. 

And as my friend says, as cheaply as England can. England pro- 
duces a portion of her tin ore, but she imports a very considerable 
quantity. I have somewhere seen that she imports more than 50 per 
cent of her consumption. 

Mr. NiEDRiNGHAus. About nine tenths. 

Now, sir, I say if we have tin ore we ought to develop it, but if we 
have no tin ore we can import it from other countries, as England 
does, and manufacture the tin plate profitably, because we make the 
sheet iron and the sheet steel, which constitute from 95 to 97 per cent 
of the value of the tin plate. I want to call attention to another 
matter, while I am on this subject, and that is the question whether 
we can and will go into the business provided adequate duties are 
provided for. I want to read a letter which I will print in my re- 
marks, with the statements of more than a dozen leading men, repre- 
senting capital to the amount of thirty, forty, or fifty millions, who 
say that if this duty is put upon tin plate they will at once embark in 



416 SPEECHES AND ADDRESSES OP WILLIAM McKINLEY. 

the manufacture. At this point I want to read a letter from the firm 
of which the gentleman from Missouri (Mr. Niedringhaus) is the 
head, as follows : 

St. Louis, November 27, 1888. 
Dear Sir : In answer to yours of the 22d instant, in reference to the manu- 
facture of tin or terne plates, we are at liberty to state that one of our mills has 
already been arranged for tin-plate work, and if a sufficient duty is put on the 
article to cover the difference between the English and American scale of wages, 
we will be ready to turn out plates on short notice. It is also very evident that 
in case a proper duty is fixed on tin and terne plates a large number of English 
manufacturers will move their works over to this side. The question as to 
whether these plates will be made in this country, therefore, depends solely upon 
proper legislation. We have for the last few years contemplated building an 
additional mill, but did not, under existing circumstances, consider the invest- 
ment a safe one. This danger, however, is in a measure removed by the Repub- 
lican victory, and if the fact, as I believe it to be, can be generally established in 
the minds of the people that the Republicans will continue to govern this country 
in the future, there will be plenty of money forthcoming to embark in the manu- 
facture of tin and terne plates. 

Yours very truly, 

F. G, NiEDEiNGHAUS, President, 
W. C. Cronemeyer, Esq., Demmler, Fa. 

There are letters also to be found in the Senate hearings of last 
year from Schomberger & Co., Kirkpatrick & Co., Chartiers Iron 
and Steel Company, Linden Steel Company, of Pittsburg, Pa., 
McDaniel, Harvey & Co., from Marshall Brothers & Co., Alan Wood 
Company, Cambria Iron Company, Whittaker Iron Company, of 
Wheeling, West Va., and others, declaring that if a suitable duty was 
put upon tin plate they could and would engage in the business of 
tin-pate making [Applause.] 

Now, as to the question whether our tin plate is as good as other 
tin plate, I have before me two letters (and I could multiply the 
number) from gentlemen who have tested the tin plate that has been 
made in the United States, and who say that it is just as good for all 
purposes as the tin plate made in Wales or in England : 

The Geo. D. Winchell Mandfacturing Company, 
Cincinnati, February 3, 1890. 

Gentlemen : We are in receipt of the sample plates of your own production 
sent us, together with your letter asking for our opinion of the same. So far as 
the body of the plate is involved it is quite up to the standard of the best Eng- 
lish plate imported. The tin coating is not as smooth and perfect as the higher 
grades of imported charcoal plates, but is quite equal to the lower grades of coke 
plates, and perhaps better, although not as smooth a surface. If Congress will 
place a suitable protection upon the production of tin plates, it will not be long 



THE TARIFF OF 1890. 417 

before this country can supply the world with a better article than is now fur- 
nished us by England. Very truly, Geo. D. Winchell, President. 
The American Tinned-Plate Association, Pittsburg, Pa. 

St. Louis Stamping Company, 
St. Louis, Febuarry 14, 1890. 

Dear Sir : We received some days ago a number of sheets of tin plate which 
you claim were made at the experimental plant at the Pittsburg exposition last 
fall. In reference to same we beg to say that we have made up two or three arti- 
cles in stamped ware out of the plates sent us. We now desire to say that we iind 
the plate equal to the work, and the quality and finish of the goods every bit as 
good as, if not better than, plates we are now regularly importing from England 
for similar work. 

Yours very truly, • St. Louis Stamping Company, 

Thos. V. Niedringhaus, Secretary. 
W. C. Cronemeyer, Esq., Secretary 

American Tinned-Plate Association, Pittsburg, Pa. 

The bill proposes a change of duty on Eoman, Portland, and 
other hydraulic cement from 20 per cent ad valorem under ex- 
isting law to 8 cents per 100 pounds. There were imported into 
the United States last year 1,515,316 barrels, at a value of $1,459,- 
875.98, an average of 96.3 cents per barrel. "We have made the 
duty specific on this commodity in place of ad valorem, on account 
of the frauds committed upon the revenue by undervaluations. 
The average cost of a barrel of cement in Germany is from $1.94 to 
$2 for 380 pounds net. The duty at 20 per cent would be 19.2 
on the valuation, as shown by the imports. If the duty was paid on 
the actual value and market price, say, $2 a barrel, the duty would be 
40 cents instead of 19.2, and that is the sum which ought to be paid 
under existing law and would be paid but for undervaluations. At 
the duty of 8 cents per 100 pounds they would pay 30 cents duty on 
a barrel of 380 pounds. If they paid 20 per cent upon the actual 
value they would pay 40 cents, or 8 cents less under the proposed 
specific duty than under the present law if the duty was paid upon 
the actual purchasing price. Therefore, while this seems to be an 
increase of duty, it in fact, under honest valuations, is a decrease on 
the present rate. 

We have taken from the free list and placed upon the dutiable 
eighteen articles ; ten are products of agriculture and the other eight 
are muriatic and sulphuric acid, gold size or Japan, aluminium and 
mica, crin vegetal or vegetable fiber, camel's hair, and amber beads. 
If these eighteen articles are imported in the same quantities dutia- 
ble as now the revenue will be increased in the sum of $2,456,030.14. 
We have taken from the dutiable list and placed upon the free list 



418 SPEECHES AND ADDRESSES OF WILLIAM McKINLEY. 

forty-four articles, wliicli last year yielded a duty of $60,936,536 ; of 
which $55,975,610 is from sugar alone. 

We have increased the duty, as I have already said, upon carpet 
Tvools, and that has necessitated an increase of the duty upon carpets 
themselves. The Committee believed that this increased duty would 
be doing even justice not only to the wool grower, but also to the car- 
pet maker and to the consumers of the United States. There is no 
industry in this country that more splendidly illustrates the value of 
a protective tariff than the carpet industry, which has had such mar- 
velous growth in the last twenty-three years. 

In 1810 the entire product of carpets in this country was about 
10,000 yards. The tariff of 1828 gave some encouragement, and in 
1834 there were twenty carpet factories in the country, operating 511 
hand looms producing annually about 1,000,000 yards of carpet. In 
1860, under the low tariff, there were only 8,000,000 pounds of wool 
consumed in making carpets in the United States, and only 13,000,000 
yards of carpet were produced, valued at a little over 87,000,000. Six 
thousand six hundred and eighty-one hands were employed, and tlie 
wages paid were less than a million and a half dollars annually. The 
value of the plants in 1860 was less than 15,000,000. Under the tariff 
of 1867, that first protective tariff law so far as wool and the manu- 
factures of wool were concerned, this industry grew and prospered, 
and in 1870 there were 215 factories in the United States, valued at 
over $12,500,000, consuming more than 33,000,000 pounds of wool, 
employing 13,000 hands, paying in wages $4,681,000 annually, and 
producing 22,000,000 yards of carpet every twelve months. 

One fourth of our total consumption was imported from England 
in 1872. In that year there were 170 looms manufacturing body 
Brussels ; in 1880 the manufacture had risen to 590 looms. In 1873 
our product in Brussels was 1,275,000 yards ; in 1880 we produced 
over 7,000,000 yards. In 1872 we imported 1,500,000 yards of body 
Brussels ; in 1880 we imported only 80,000 yards. We doubled the 
looms for manufacturing Wiltons between 1870 and 1880. Now 
take tapestry Brussels — " the poor man's carpet," if you please. 
In 1872 we had 143 looms ; in 1880 we had increased to 1,073 looms. 
In 1872 we produced 1,500,000 yards of tapestry Brussels ; in 1880 
we produced 16,950,000 yards of tapestry Brussels. In 1872 we im- 
ported 3,670,000 yards of tapestry Brussels from England ; in 1880 
we imported only 100,000 yards. [ApjDlause on the Republican 
side.] All this time the prices were being reduced. In 1872 the 
price of body Brussels by the wholesale was over $2 per yard; in 



THE TARIFF OF 1890. 419 

1880 the wholesale price had gone below $1.50 a yard, and to-day 
you can buy it for 93 cents a yard. [Applause.] In 1872 tapestry 
carpets averaged $1.46 per yard ; in 1880 the price had gone 
down to 90 cents, and to-day you can buy the best quality for 65 
cents per yard. The extra super ingrain carpet which in 1872 
sold for 11.20 can be bought to-day for 45 cents per yard, all wool 
and a yard wide. The total production of carpets in the United 
States (estimated) in 1880 was 39,272,000 yards; capital invested, 
121,486,000 ; operatives employed, 30,371 ; paid out in wages, 16,- 
435,000. It is estimated that to-day there are 204 carpet factories 
in this country running 11,500 looms (of which 7,597 are power 
looms), employing 43,000 hands, in 1889 consuming over 90,000,000 
pounds of wool, and turning out 76,880,000 yards of carpet. Why, 
sir, in the city of Philadelphia alone there is produced 20,000,000 
yards of carpet annually — 16,000,000 less than the entire output of 
the United Kingdom of Great Britain. And all the while the price 
of carpet had gone down. 

But the ad valorem has gone up ; and that is what troubles the 
gentlemen on the other side. [Applause on the Eepublican side.] 
It is the high ad valorems that you gentlemen advocating tariff 
reform keep before your eyes. You shut your eyes to the diminish- 
ing prices. The favorite assault of the Democratic free-trader or 
revenue-tariff reformer is to parade these high percentages and 
ad valorem equivalents to show the enormous burdens of taxation 
that we impose upon the people of the United States. Now, let us 
look at this for a moment while we are passing. AVhen steel rails 
were $100 a ton we had a duty on them of $28 a ton. What would 
be its equivalent ad valorem? Twenty-eight per cent. That is 
not enormous. My friend from Texas [Mr. Mills] even would not 
hold that as too high an ad valorein equivalent. But the very in- 
stant we reduced the price of steel rails to $50 a ton, because of that 
duty of $28, which encouraged our own producers to engage in this 
business — when the price went down to $50 a ton the ad valorem 
equivalent went up to 56 per cent; for $28 a ton duty, with steel 
rails at $50 a ton, would be equivalent to 56 per cent. They are 
troubled about the ad valorem equivalent. They look to percent- 
ages ; we look to prices. We would rather have steel rails at $50 a 
ton and an ad valorem equivalent of 50 per cent than to have steel 
rails at $100 a ton and an ad valorem equivalent of only 25 per cent. 
[Applause on the Republican side.] They pursue a shadow; we en- 
joy the substance. [Applause.] What do we care about ad vale- 



420 SPEECHES AND ADDRESSES OP WILLIAM McKINLEY. 

rems ? But you will hear of higli ad valorems in this debate from 
its beginning to its close. Why, sir, when you bought a crate of 
ware in 1855 at $96, the ad valorem was only 34 per cent. You buy 
the same crate of ware to-day for $4G ; but the ad valorem has gone 
up to 55 per cent. Which would you rather have, low ad valorem 
equivalents and high-priced goods, or high ad valorem equivalents 
aud low-priced goods'? [Applause.] Why, sir, you can not eat ad 
valorems [laughter] ; you can not wear ad valorems ; you can not 
carpet your floors with ad valorems ; you can not roof your house 
with ad valorems ; you can not furnish your table with ad valorems. 
We do not care how high they go up if the price of the commodity 
goes down ; and when they go up it is because we have by our pro- 
tective tariff reduced the price to the consumer. 

Why, Mr. Chairman, gentlemen on the other side take great 
comfort in a quotation which they make from Daniel Webster. They 
have thought it so valuable that they have put it in their minority 
report. It is from a speech made by Mr. Webster in Faneuil Hall in 
1820 when he condemned the protective policy. I want to put 
Daniel Webster in 184G against Daniel Webster in 1820. Listen to 
an extract from his speech of July 25, 1846 — the last tariff speech 
and probably the most elaborate tariff speech that he ever made in 
his long public career. He then said : 

But, sir, before I proceed further, I will take notice of what appears to be 
some attempt, latterly, hj the republication of opinions and expressions, argu- 
ments and speeches of mine, at an earlier and a later period of my life, to place 
me in a position of inconsistency on this subject of the protective policy of the 
country. Mr. President, if it be an inconsistency to hold an opinion upon a sub- 
ject of public policy to-day in one state of circumstances, and to hold a different 
opinion upon the same subject of public policy to-morrow in a different state of 
circumstances, if that be an inconsistency, I admit its applicability to myself. 

And then, after discussing the great benefits of the protective 
tariff, he added : 

The interest of every laboring community requires diversity of occupations, 
pursuits, and objects of industry. The more that diversity is multiplied or ex- 
tended the better. To diversify employment is to increase employment and to 
enhance wages. And, sir, take this great truth ; place it on the title-page of 
every book of political economy intended for the use of the Government ; put it 
in every farmer's almanac ; let it be the heading of the column in every me- 
chanic's magazine ; proclaim it everywhere, and make it a proverb, that where 
there is work for the hands of men there will be work for their teeth. Where 
there is employment there will be bread. It is a great blessing to the poor to 
have cheap food, but greater than that, prior to that, and of still higher value, 
is the blessing of being able to buy food by honest and respectable employment. 



THE TARIFF OF 1890. 421 

Employment feeds and clothes and instructs. Employment gives health, 
sobriety, and morals. Constant employment and well-paid labor produce in a 
country like ours general prosperity, contentment, and cheerfulness. Thus 
happy have we seen the country. Thus happy may we long continue to see it. 

In this happy condition we have seen the country under a pro- 
tective policy. It is hoped we may long continue to see it, and if he 
had lived long enough he would have seen the best vindication of his 
later views. Then he continued, and I commend this especially, in 
all kindness and with great respect, to the gentlemen of the minority 
of the Committee : 

I hope I know more of the Constitution of my country than 1 did when I was 
twenty years old. 

[Laughter and applause on the Kepublican side.] 

I hope I have contemplated its great objects more broadly. I hope I have 
read with deeper interest the sentiments of the great men who framed it. I hope 
1 have studied with more care the condition of the country when the Convention 
assembled to form it. . . . And now, sir, allow me to say that I am quite in- 
different, or rather thankful, to those conductors of the public press who think 
they can not do better than now and then to spread my poor opinions before the 
public. 

[Great applause.] 

What is the nature of the complaint against this bill — that it 
shuts us out of a foreign market ? No, for whatever that is worth to 
our citizens will be just as accessible under this bill as under the 
present law. We place no tax or burden or restraint upon American 
products going out of the country. They are as free to seek the 
best market as the products of any commercial power, and as free to 
go out as though we had absolute free trade. Statistics show that 
protective tariffs have not interrupted our export trade, but that it 
has always steadily and largely increased under them. 

In the year 1843, being the first year after the protective tariff 
of 1842 went into operation, our exports exceeded our imports 
$40,392,229, and in the following year they exceeded our imports 
$3,141,226. In the two years following the excess of exports over 
imports was $15,475,000. The last year under that tariff the excess 
of exports over imports was $34,317,249. So during the five years of 
the tariff of 1842 the excess of exports over imports Avas $02,375,000. 
Under the low tariff of 184G this was reversed, and, with the single 
exception of the year 1858, the imports exceeded the exports (cover- 
ing a period of fourteen years) $405,553,625. 

During the war and down to 1865 the imports with two exceptions 
exceeded the exports. From 1876 down to 1889 inclusive (covering 



422 SPEECHES AND ADDRESSES OP WILLIAM McKINLEY. 

a period of fourteen years) there were only two years when our im- 
ports exceeded our exports, and the total excess of exports over im- 
ports was 11,581,906,871 of the products of our own people more 
than we brought into the United States. [Loud applause on the Ee- 
publican side.] The balance of trade has been almost uninterrupted- 
ly in our favor during the protective tariff periods of our history, and 
against us with few exceptions during revenue-tariff periods. This 
would seem to indicate a healthful business condition with the out- 
side world, resulting from the Republican economic system, and an 
unhealthful condition where we had to send money out of the country 
to pay our balances under the Democratic system. [Applause on the 
Eepublican side.] The chief complaint against this bill comes from 
importers and consignees here, on the one hand, and the foreign mer- 
chants and consignors abroad. Why do they complain ? Manifestly 
because in some way this bill will check their business here and in- 
crease the business of our own manufacturers and producers ; it will 
diminish the importation of competing foreign goods, and increase the 
consumption of our homemade goods. This may be a good reason 
to influence the foreigner to oppose its passage, but is hardly a sound 
reason why Americans should oppose it. [Applause on the Eepub- 
lican side.] 

If the bill checks foreign importations of goods competing with 
ours, it will increase our production and necessarily increase the de- 
mand for labor at home. [Applause.] This may be a good reason 
why the cheap labor of other countries should be unfriendly to the 
bill, and it surely furnishes the best of reasons why the workmen 
of the United States should favor it, as they do. We do not conceal 
the purpose of this bill ; we want our own countrymen and all man- 
kind to know it. It is to increase production here, diversify our pro- 
ductive enterprises, enlarge the field, and increase the demand for 
American workmen. What American can oppose these worthy and 
patriotic objects? Others not Americans may find justification for 
doing so. This bill is an American bill. It is made for the American 
people and American interests. [Applause.] 

The press of other countries has denounced the bill with unmeas- 
ured severity ; the legislative assemblies of more than one distant 
country have given it attention in no friendly spirit. It has received 
the censure of foreign powers and diplomats — for all which there 
is manifest reason ; it may pinch them, but no American citizen 
surely can object to it on that account. We are not legislating for 
any nation but our own ; for our people and for no other people are 



THE TARIFF OF 1890. 423 

we charged with the duties of legislation. We say to our foreign 
brethren : " We will not interfere in your domestic legislation ; we 
admonish you to keep your hands off of ours." [Loud applause on 
the Republican side.] 

We hear much talk of " foreign trade " and " foreign commerce," as 
though these were the all and only essentials to National development 
and prosperity, wholly disregarding our domestic commerce and our 
domestic trade. What boots it whether our commerce is on the seas 
to foreign ports or on inland seas and lakes to domestic ports ? What 
boots it whether our products of the East go to Chicago, St. Louis, 
St. Paul, and Minneapolis, and San Francisco, to Portland, and 
throughout the great West and Northwest, and are consumed there, 
or to Australia, China, and Japan — 

A Member. Or by water or by rail ? 

And, as my friend suggests, or carried by water or by rail ; or that 
the products of the West are carried to Cincinnati and Pittsburg, 
Philadelphia, and New York, and Boston, and there consumed, or 
that they go to London and Liverpool? We do not depreciate the 
value of our foreign trade ; we are proud of it. It is of great value, 
and must be sacredly guarded and promoted, but what peculiar sanc- 
tity hangs about it which does not attach to our domestic trade ? Is 
not an American consumer as valuable to us as a foreign consumer ? 
Is not he a better consumer, and therefore a better customer to the 
American producer ? [Applause.] 

If our trade and commerce are increasing and profitable within 
our own borders, what advantage can come by passing it by, confess- 
edly the best market, that we may reach the poorest by distant seas ? 
In the foreign market the profit is divided between our own citizen 
and the foreigner, while with the trade and commerce among our- 
selves the profit is kept in our own family and increases our National 
wealth and promotes the welfare of the individual citizen. Yet in 
spite of all the croaking about foreign trade our exports were never 
so great as they are to-day. We send abroad what is not consumed 
at home, and we could do no more under any system. 

Contrast the imports and exports of the United Kingdom, under 
free trade and unrestrained commerce, Avith the imports and exports 
of the United States. In 1870 the total value of imports and exports 
of the United Kingdom was $3,GG3,620,718 ; in 1888 itwas $3,330,087, 
844, an increase in eighteen years of 1072,467,126, equivalent to 25 
per cent. The total value of the imports and exports of the United 
Statesin 1870 was 8917,794,421 ; in 1889,11,487,533,027; an increase 



424 SPEECHES AND ADDRESSES OF WILLIAM McKINLEY. 

of $569,738,606, or an equivalent of 62 per cent, so that it will be 
observed that under the revenue-tarifE system of Great Britain her 
imports and exports between 1870 and 1888 increased but 25^ per 
cent, while under the protective system of the United States, which 
is characterized by our opponents as exclusive and restrictive and like 
" a Chinese wall," the imports and exports of the United States in- 
creased between 1870 and 1888, 62.8 per cent, a gain over Great Brit- 
ain of over 37 per cent. We sent out in those years much more than 
we brought in. Notwithstanding the complaint that is made about the 
" decadence of our foreign commerce," Mulhall informs us that Great 
Britain's proportion in the foreign commerce in 1830 was 27.2 per 
cent, of the commerce of the world ; but in 1870 it had fallen to 24.5 
per cent; and in 1880 her proportion was but 21.2 per cent. In 1830 
the United States had but 3.7 per cent of the commerce of the 
world ; in 1870 she had risen to 9.2 per cent, and in 1880 she had 
11.5 per cent. 

While Great Britain lost, between 1870 and 1880, 13 per cent of 
her trade, the United States gained 22 per cent. And if the United 
States would give the same encouragement to her merchant marine 
and her steamship lines as is given by other nations to their ships 
this commerce on the seas under the American flag would increase 
and multiply. When the United States will expend from her 
treasury from five to six millions a year for that purpose, as do 
France and Great Britain to maintain their steamship lines, our 
ships will plow every sea in successful competition with the ships of 
the world. [Loud applause on the Eepublican side.] Will you 
gentlemen join us in encouraging our merchant marine ? [Renewed 
applause on the Republican side.] 

But, Mr. Chairman, in the presence of our magnificent domestic 
commerce, the commerce along our inland seas, our lakes and rivers 
and great railroad lines, why need we vex ourselves about foreign 
commerce ? The domestic trade of the United States is 95 per cent 
of the whole of our trade. Nowhere is the progress of the country so 
manifest as in this wonderful growth and development. Our coast- 
ing trade more than doubled our foreign trade in 1880. It was 34,- 
000,000 tons as against 16,000,000 of foreign, including all our ex- 
ports and imports, carried in all the ships of the world, in 1880. 
Our inland water tonnage was 25,000,000 ; our foreign, 16,000,000. 

The water carriage of the United States along its coasts and its 
rivers is five times greater than the foreign commerce of the United 
States. Why, the movement of tonnage through the Detroit River 



THE TARIFF OP 1890. 425 

in 1889 was 10,000,000 tons more than the total registered entries 
and clearances at all the seaports of the United States, and it was 
3,000,000 tons in excess of the combined foreign and coastwise regis- 
tered tonnage of the ports of Liverpool and London. [Applause on 
the Eepublican side.] What higher testimony do we want of the 
growth of our internal commerce ? 

We try nations as they appear on the balance sheet of the world. 
We try systems by results ; we are too practical a people for theory. 
We know what we have done and are doing under the economic sys- 
tem we advocate. We know that almost every month the balance of 
trade in our favor is in excess of 120,000,000. We know the manu- 
factures of the United States in 1889 amounted to $1,126,000,000, as 
against $810,000,000 of Great Britain. We know that in 1887 we 
manufactured 3,339,000 tons of steel rails, and that the manufactories 
of England turned out only 3,170,000. We know that the United 
States in 1887 produced 2,308,000 tons of iron, and England 1,711,- 
000 tons. 

On the Atlantic seaboard there will be produced this year 100,000 
tons of steel shipping built in our own ports from our own material. 
[Applause.] The shipyards of the lakes for the past four years have 
been constantly engaged. In 1886-'87 we built thirty-one boats, 
with a capacity of 65,750 gross tons, valued at 14,074,000. In 
1887-88, sixty boats; gross tons, 108,525; value, $8,325,000. In 
1888-'89, fifty-nine boats; gross tons, 100,950; value, $7,124,000. 
In 1889-'90, fifty-six boats; gross tons, 124,750; value, $7,866,000. 
A total of 206 boats ; capacity, 399,975 gross tons, and a total value, 
$27,389,000. The Chicago Tribune recently said : 

The inland marine, representing an aggregate capital of $53,000,000, has car- 
ried during the season [that of 1889J now closed 145,000,000 bushels of grain of 
all classes and flour reduced to grain, 6,000,000 tons of iron ore from the Lake 
Superior mines to the blast furnaces, and brought back 4,200,000 tons of coal 
from Lake Erie. It has brought into Chicago 450,000 tons of general merchan- 
dise, valued at $50,000,000, and carried away 525,000 tons, valued at $10,500,000. 
It has brought to Duluth merchandise valued at about half that sura, and carried 
away to Buffalo goods worth $15,000,000, These figures, vast as they are, repre- 
sent only the business of the inland marine between Lake Erie and Lakes Michi- 
gan and Superior. The great lumber trade and the local trade on the five Great 
Lakes, each representing a tariff of many tens of million dollars, are not included. 

Our railroad mileage and tonnage further illustrate the growth 
and extent of our domestic trade and commerce. In 1865 the num- 
ber of miles of railroad in operation in this country was 35,085 ; in 
1887 there were 150,000 miles. We now have one half of the rail- 



426 SPEECHES AND ADDRESSES OP WILLIAM McKlNLEY. 

roads of the world. Estimating the cost of road and equipment at 
135,000 per mile, the amount expended in twenty-two years equaled 
14,037,495,000, a yearly expenditure of over $183,000,000. According 
to Poor's Manual, the total tonnage for 1882 was 360,490,375 tons; 
for 1883, 400,453,439 tons; for 1884, 399,074,749 tons; for 1885, 
437,040,099 tons; for 1886,482,245,254 tons; for 1887,552,074,752 
tons. I will not stop, Mr. Chairman, to give the figures that I have 
before me. I am already very much wearied myself, and I must not 
detain the Committee much longer. [Cries of " Go on ! "] 

According to the statement of Mr. Poor, the tonnage of the Penn- 
sylvania Railroad for 1865 was 2,555,706 tons ; in 1887, 30,147,635 
tons, the increase equaling 27,591,929 tons, the rate of increase in the 
twenty-two years being nearly 1,100 per cent. The tonnage of the 
New York Central Railroad increased from 1,767,059 in 1865 to 14,- 
626,951 in 1887, the rate of increase being over 700 per cent. The 
tonnage of the Erie Railroad in 1865 was 2,234,350, and in 1887, 13,- 
549,260, the rate of increase being over 500 per cent. The tonnage 
of the three roads in 1865 equaled 6,557,115 ; in 1887, 58,323,884 
tons, the increase equaling 51,766,732, the rate of increase being very 
nearly 800 per cent. Poor estimates that the net tonnage of 1887 of 
all the railroads in the country equaled 412,500,000 ; the number of 
gross tons moved in 1887 on all the railroads of the United States per 
head of population equaled nine tons. In 1865 the gross tonnage 
moved equaled only two tons per head. The same authority esti- 
mates that the value of the total net tonnage of the railroads of the 
United States is equal to the sum of $13,327,830,000, and at this esti- 
mate the value of the tonnage moved in 1887 equaled $222 per head 
of the population of the country. The increase in value of the rail- 
road tonnage of the country in 1887 equaled $1,660,000,000 or $960,- 
000,000 in excess of the value of the exports for the same year. Could 
all this have been secured under your economic system ? Would it 
have been possible under any other than the protective system ? 

We have now enjoyed twenty-nine years continuously of protec- 
tive tariff laws — the longest uninterrupted period in which that policy 
has prevailed since the formation of the Federal Government — and 
we find ourselves at the end of that period in a condition of inde- 
pendence and prosperity the like of which has never been witnessed 
at any other period in the history of our country, and the like of 
which has no parallel in the recorded history of the world. In all 
that goes to make a nation great and strong and independent we 
have made extraordinary strides. In arts, in science, in literature, in 



THE TARIFF OF 1890. 427 

manufactures, in invention, in scientific principles applied to manu- 
facture and agriculture, in wealth and credit, and National honor we 
are at the very front, abreast with the best, and behind none. 

In 1860, after fourteen years of a revenue tariff, just the kind of a 
tariff that our political adversaries are advocating to-day, the business 
of the country was prostrated, agriculture was deplorably depressed, 
manufacturing was on the decline, and the poverty of the Govern- 
ment itself made this Nation a byword in the financial centers of the 
world. We neither had money nor credit. Both are essential ; a 
nation can get on if it has abundant revenues, but if it has none it 
must have credit. We had neither, as the legacy of the Democratic 
revenue tariff. We have both now. We have a surplus revenue and 
a spotless credit. [Applause.] I need not state what is so fresh in 
our minds, so recent in our history, as to be known to every gentle- 
man who hears me, that from the inauguration of the protective tariff 
laws of 1861, the old Morrill tariff — which has brought to that veteran 
statesman the highest honor and will give to him his proudest monu- 
ment — this condition changed. Confidence was restored, courage 
was inspired, the Government started upon a progressive era under a 
system thoroughly American. 

With a great war on our hands, with an army to enlist and pre- 
pare for service, with untold millions of money to supply, the pro- 
tective tariff never failed us in a single emergency, and while money 
was flowing into our Treasury to save the Government, industries 
were springing up all over the land — the foundation and cornerstone 
of our prosperity and glory. With a debt of over $2,750,000,000 when 
the war terminated, holding on to our protective laws, against Demo- 
cratic opposition, we have reduced that debt at an average rate of 
more than $63,000,000 each year, 8174,000 every twenty-four hours 
for the last twenty-five years, and what looked to be a burden almost 
impossible to bear has been removed under the Republican fiscal sys- 
tem until now it is less than 81,000,000,000, and with the payment of 
this vast sum of money the Nation has not been impoverished. The 
individual citizen has not been burdened or bankrupted. National 
and individual prosperity have gone steadily on, until our wealth is 
so great as to be almost incomprehensible when put into figures. 

The accumulations of the laborers of the country have increased, 

and the working classes of no nation in the world have such splendid 

deposits in savings banks as the working classes of the United States. 

f Listen to their story : The deposits of all the savings banks of New 

England in 1886 equaled $554,532,434. The deposits in the savings 

28 



428 SPEECHES AND ADDRESSES OF WILLIAM McKINLEY. 

banks of New York in 1886 were $482,686,730. The deposits in the 
savings banks of Massachusetts for the year 1887 were $302,948,624, 
and the number of depositors was 944,778, or $320.67 for each de- 
positor. The savings banks of nine States have in nineteen years 
increased their deposits $628,000,000. The English savings banks 
have in thirty-four years increased theirs $350,000,000. Our opera- 
tive deposits $7 to the English operative's $1. These vast sums rep- 
resent the savings of the men whose labor has been employed under 
the protective policy which gives, as experience has shown, the largest 
possible reward to labor. 

There is no one thing standing alone that so surely tests the wis- 
dom of a national financial policy as the national credit, what it 
costs to maintain it, and the burden it imposes upon the citizen. It 
is a fact which every American should contemplate with pride that 
the public debt of the United States, per capita, is less than that of 
any other great nation of the world. Let me call the roll : France's 
public debt, per capita, is $218.27 ; Great Britain, $100.09 ; Italy, 
$74.25; Spain, $73.34; Belgium, $72.18; Germany, $43.10; Eussia, 
$35.41 ; United States, $33.92 on a population of 50,000,000 ; and 
now, with our increased population, the per capita is under $35. 
[Applause.] England increased her rate of taxation between 1870 
and 1880 over 24 per cent, while the United States diminished hers 
nearly 10 per cent. 

We lead all nations in agriculture, we lead all nations in mining, 
and we lead all nations in manufacturing. These are the trophies 
which we bring after twenty-nine years of a protective tariff. Can 
any other system furnish such evidences of prosperity ? Yet, in the 
presence of such a showing of progress, there are men who talk about 
" the restraints we put upon trade " and " the burdens we put upon 
the enterprise and energy of our people." There is no country in 
the world where individual enterprise has such wide and varied range 
and where the inventive genius of man has such encouragement as 
in the United States. There is no nation in the world, under any 
system, where the same reward is given to the labor of men's hands 
and the work of their brains as in the United States. "We have 
widened the sphere of human endeavor and given to every man a 
fair chance in the race of life and in the attainment of the highest 
possibilities of human destiny. To reverse this system means to stop 
the progress of the Eeiiublic and reduce the masses to small rewards 
for their labor, to longer hours and less pay, to the simple question 
of bread and butter. It means to turn them from ambition, courage, 



THE TARIFF OF 1890. 429 

and hope, to dependence, degradation, and despair. No sane man 
will give up what he has, what he is in full possession of, what he 
can count on for himself and his children, for what is promised by 
your theories. 

Free trade, or, as you are pleased to call it, " revenue tariff," means 
the opening up of this market, which is admitted to be the best in 
the world, to the free entry of the products of the world. It means 
more — it means that the labor of this country is to be remitted to its 
earlier condition, and that the condition of our people is to be leveled 
down to the condition of rival countries ; because under it every ele- 
ment of cost, every item of production, including wages, must be 
brought down to the level of the lowest paid labor of the world. No 
other result can follow, and no other result is anticipated or expected 
by those who intelligently advocate a revenue tariff. We can not 
maintain ourselves against unequal conditions without the tariff, and 
no man of affairs believes we can. Under the system of unrestricted 
trade which you gentlemen recommend, we will have to reduce every 
element of cost down to or below that of our commercial rivals or 
surrender them to our own market. No one will dispute that state- 
ment ; and to go into the domestic market of our rivals would mean 
that production here must be so reduced that with transportation 
added we could undersell them in their own market ; and to meet 
them in neutral markets and divide the trade with them would mean 
that we could profitably sell side by side with them at their minimum 
price. 

First, then, to retain our own market under the Democratic sys- 
tem of raising revenue by removing all protection would require our 
producers to sell at as low a price and upon as favorable terms as our 

! foreign competitors. How could that be done? In one way only — by 
producing as cheaply as those who would seek our markets. What 

' would that entail ? An entire revolution in the methods and condi- 
tion and conduct of business here, a leveling down through every 
channel to the lowest line of our competitors ; our habits of living 
would have to be changed, our wages cut down fifty per cent or more, 
our comfortable homes exchanged for hovels, our independence 
yielded up, our citizenship demoralized. These are conditions insep- 
arable to free trade ; these would be necessary if we would command 
our own market among our own people ; and if we would invade the 
world's markets, harsher conditions and greater sacrifices would be 
demanded of the masses. Talk about depression — we would then 
have it in its fullness. We would revel in unrestrained trade. Every- 



430 SPEECHES AND ADDRESSES OP WILLIAM McKINLEY. 

thing would indeed be cheap, but how costly when measured by the 
degradation which would ensue ! When merchandise is the cheapest, 
men are the poorest; and the most distressing experiences in the 
history of our country — aye, in all human history — have been when 
everything was the lowest and cheapest measured by gold, for every- 
thing was the highest and the dearest measured by labor. We want 
no return of cheap times in our own country. We have no wish to 
adopt the conditions of other nations. Experience has demonstrated 
that for us and ours, and for the present and the future, the protec- 
tive system meets our wants, our conditions, promotes the National 
design, and will work out our destiny better than any other. 

With me this position is a deep conviction, not a theory. I be- 
lieve in it and thus warmly advocate it because enveloped in it are 
my country's highest development and greatest prosperity ; out of it 
come the greatest gains to the people, the greatest comforts to the 
masses, the widest encouragement for manly aspirations, with the 
largest rewards, dignifying and elevating our citizenship, upon which 
the safety and purity and permanency of our political system depend. 
[Long-continued applause on the Republican side, and cries of 
"Vote!" "Vote!"] 





^^-^^^^^ 



ULYSSES S. GEANT. 

Address at the Celebratiois: of the Seventy-first Anni- 
versary OF His Birth at Galena, Illinois, on April 

27, 1893. 

[From the Oalena Gazette.'] 

Mr. President, Citizens of Galena, Ladies and Gentle- 
men : I can not forbear at the outset to express to you the very great 
honor that I feel in being permitted to share with you, at the city 
of Galena, in the observance of the seventy-first anniversary of the 
birth of that great soldier who once belonged to you, but now, as 
Stanton said of Lincoln, " belongs to the ages." No history of the 
war could be written without mentioning the State of Illinois and 
city of Galena. They contributed the two most conspicuous names 
in that great civil conflict, the civil and military rulers — Abraham 
Lincoln and Ulysses S. Grant. [Applause.] No history of Ulysses 
S. Grant can be written without there coming unbidden from every 
lip the name Galena, and no faithful biograi)hy of the great soldier 
will ever omit the name of his cherished friend, General John A. 
Rawlins, also a resident of your city. [Applause.] You have a proud 
history; Grant gave his sword and his services to his country at 
Galena, and gave the country back to the people at Appomattox. 
[Applause.] He presided over the first Union meeting ever held in 
Galena, and he presided over the greatest Union meeting ever held 
beneath the flag at Appomattox. [Great applause.] He was little 
known at the first meeting ; the whole world knew him at the last. 
[Renewed and long-continued applause.] 

We are not a Nation of hero-worshipers. Our popular favorites 
are soon counted. With more than a hundred years of National life, 
crowded with great events and marked by mighty struggles, few of 
the great actors have more than survived the generation in which 
they lived. Nor has the Nation or its people been ungenerous to its 
great leaders, whether as statesmen or soldiers. The Republic has 



432 SPEECHES AND ADDRESSES OF WILLIAM McKINLEY. 

dealt justly, and I believe liberally, with its public men. Yet less 
than a score of them are remembered by the multitude, and the stu- 
dent of history only can call many of the most distinguished but 
now forgotten names. How few can recall the names of the Presi- 
dents of the United States in the order of their administrations; 
fewer still can name the Governors of Illinois, and the United States 
Senators who have represented this State in that great legislative 
body. They were popular favorites in their day, representative men, 
in every sense worthy the high stations to which their fellow-citizens 
called them ; but they have passed from public thought and memory, 
and it is left for the relic-hunters to unfold their greatness and dis- 
close their names. The narrowest circle, the gifted few, alone sur- 
vive. Those whose labors were not alone for their age and genera- 
tion, but whose work reached out into the future, broader and deeper 
than the want of their time, still live in the recollections and hearts of 
their countrymen. Let me call the best remembered : Washington 
and Franklin, Adams and Jefferson, Hamilton and Madison, Mar- 
shall and Webster, Jackson, Clay and Calhoun, Lincoln and Douglas, 
Chase and Seward, Stanton and Garfield. [Applause.] These so 
impressed the times, so shaped and controlled events, so guided legis- 
lation, so promoted an enlightened public sentiment, as to overleap 
the limit of their lives and sweep beyond and into the future. They 
represented ideas ; they stood as the leaders of men and of parties ; 
they battled for principle. Most of them accomplished results for 
the welfare of their fellows and the good of mankind ; they marked 
eras in the progress of the Nation, and they will be remembered 
because their labors rest upon the bed rock of great results, and a 
mighty Nation and a generous people have crowned them with un- 
fading laurels, and will guard with sacred vigil their illustrious names. 

We assemble to-day to celebrate the seventy-first anniversary of 
the birth of one of the grandest and most illustrious of our public 
men. [Applause.] Fit companion of the distinguished band of 
statesmen and soldiers who preceded him, he was in many respects 
the peer of the brightest name in our National galaxy, and it is but 
right and proper that we should unite in rearing to his memory a 
suitable monument, to attest the love and reverence of his former 
fellow-citizens. The whole world is familiar with his history, but 
it seems appropriate, and may not be unprofitable, for us to briefly 
review it. 

On Thursday morning, July 23, 1885, at a few minutes past eight 
o'clock, Ulysses Simpson Grant died at Mount McGregor, in the 



ULYSSES S. GRANT. 433 

State of New York, aged sixty-three years. He had been an 
intense but patient sufferer for many months from a dread and 
fatal disease, and while death had been looked for at any mo- 
ment, when at last it came it sent grief into the hearts and homes 
of the American people, and penetrated with sorrow all lands and 
all nations. 

This distinguished citizen, whose life we commemorate, and the 
anniversary of whose birth we pause to celebrate to-day, was born at 
Point Pleasant, Clermont County, Ohio, on April 27, 1822. His 
early life was not eventful. It did not differ from that of most of 
the boys of his time, and gave no more promise than that of the 
multitude of youth of his age and station, either of the past or 
present. Of Scottish descent, he sprang from humble but industrious 
parents, and with faith and courage, with a will and mind for work, 
he confronted the problem of life. 

At the age of seventeen he was sent as a cadet to the West Point 
Military Academy ; his predecessor having failed to pass the neces- 
sary examination, the vacancy was filled by the appointment of young 
Grant. At the Academy he was marked as a painstaking, studious, 
plodding, persistent pupil, who neither graduated at the head nor 
the foot of his class, but stood number twenty-one in a class of thirty- 
nine. His rank at graduation placed him in the infantry arm of the 
service, and in 1843 he was commissioned a brevet Second Lieutenant 
in the Fourth United States Regulars. No qualities of an exceptional 
nature showed themselves up to this point in the character of the 
young officer. 

His first actual experience in war was in Mexico. Here he dis- 
tinguished himself, and was twice mentioned in general orders for his 
conspicuous gallantry. He was twice brevetted by the President of 
the United States for heroic conduct at the battles of Monterey, 
Palo Alto, Resaca de la Palma, Chapultepec and Molino del Rey. 
After the war with Mexico he was stationed with his regiment on 
the Northern frontier, and subsequently on the Pacific coast in 
Oregon and California, in which latter stations he saw much trying 
service with the Indians. On July 31, 1854, he resigned his com- 
mission in the Army, after eleven years' service therein — a service 
creditable to him in every particular, but in no sense so marked as 
to distinguish him from a score of others of equal rank and oppor- 
tunity. 

As a private citizen he was little known either at St. Louis, Mo., 
where he first took up his residence, or at Galena, 111., where he sub- 



434 SPEECHES AND ADDRESSES OP WILLIAM McKINLEY. 

sequently located his home. In business he did not get on well. His 
early undertakings, in Missouri, proved mortifying failures, and at 
that time he would have been called a very unsuccessful man. His 
father-in-law had given him a tract of land near the city of St. Louis, 
and there he built a log house for the family residence. As indi- 
cating his ill luck and hard lines at that period, and with that un- 
affected frankness always so conspicuous with him, he significantly 
called his humble home " Hard Scrabble." Joining his father in 
Galena in the leather business, he was more fortunate, and when the 
war came on he was fairly comfortable, nothing more. In his years 
of poverty he demonstrated one liigh quality, that of industry ; he 
was not afraid of hard work. He made a full hand in felling timber 
and hauling it to market. He labored with his hands in his father's 
tannery. These were accomplishments not taught at "West Point, 
but his strong and sturdy nature, so marked in later years, did not 
shrink from the roughest and most menial labor to provide for his 
family. 

He was thirty-nine years old when Sumter fell, and within ten 
days he was in the city of Springfield, Illinois, with a company of his 
and your fellow-townsmen, offering their services for immediate duty 
at the front. Although friendly to the South, as he had always 
been, his old Army associates and closest friends being chiefly from 
that section, and with whom he had always been in political accord, 
he was not for an instant irresolute or in doubt as to the pathway of 
duty, but was swift to tender his skill, his experience, and, if re- 
quired, his life, for the cause of the Union. On April 19, 1861, when 
other men were hesitating and wavering, he wrote to a friend : 

" Now is the time for men to prove their love of country ; now all party dis- 
tinctions should be lost sight of, and every true patriot be for maintaining the 
integrity of the glorious Stars and Stripes, the Union, and the Constitution. . . . 
No impartial man,"' said he, " can conceal from himself the fact that in all these 
troubles the Southerners have been the aggressors, and the administration has 
stood purely on the defensive — more on the defensive than she would dared have 
done but for her consciousness of strength and the certainty of right prevailing in 
the end." 

These were noble, patriotic words from the young Captain, uttered 
at the right time, without apology or equivocation, and disclose the 
sturdy elements of his character and the directness of purpose which 
distinguished his illustrious career. Then his eyes penetrated the 
future, and in the same letter he declares that " in all this I can but 
see the doom of slavery." His broad vision saw with clearness what 
few others were given to see or believe at that early day ; and he 



ULYSSES S. GRANT. 435 

lived to witness his prophecy of 1861 ripen into glorious fulfillment, 
and to him more than to any other man, living or dead, citizen or 
soldier, was Abraham Lincoln indebted for the power to enforce his 
great Proclamation of Emancipation. [Great applause.] He seemed 
also to comprehend the power and determined spirit of the North, 
for on the same day he said : 

" The Government can call into the field not only 75,000 troops, but ten or 
twenty times 75,000, if it should be necessary ; and find the means of maintaining 
them too." 

He realized the mighty resources and strength of his country. 
Who at that early period would have thought that in less than three 
years the United States would have mustered for duty his extreme 
estimate of twenty times 75,000 soldiers — a million and a half of men 
battling for the Union — and that he would be their supreme com- 
mander in the field? [Cheers.] The letter from which I quote 
clearly shows that the young soldier had been growing in the years of 
his seclusion and poverty, and that the opening guns of the war 
found him thoroughly equipped in mind and soul for the great con- 
flict in which he was later to be the central figure. 

Once in the city of Springfield, his military knowledge was called 
into immediate requisition, and until June 17, 1861, he assisted the 
Governor in the muster and organization of the fast-arriving troops, 
when he was commissioned Colonel of the Twenty-first Illinois In- 
fantry. From this loyal Prairie State he marched with his regiment 
to the turbulent State of Missouri, where outbreaks were rife and 
open war was threatened, joining the forces under General Fremont. 
On August 7, 1861, he received a commission as Brigadier General 
of Volunteers, which was his first recognition from the President of 
the United States. He had offered his services to the National 
Government in a letter written on May 24, 1861, but no answer was 
ever made to it, though his commission as Brigadier General was 
dated back to May 17th. 

He was successful from the very beginning of his military com- 
mand. His earliest, like his later blows, were tellingly disastrous to 
the enemy. First at Paducah, then defeating Polk and Pillow at 
Belmont ; again at Fort Henry, which he captured. Then he deter- 
mined to destroy Fort Donelson, and with rare coolness and de- 
liberation he settled himself down to the task, which he successfully 
accomplished on February 16, 1863. After two days of severe battle, 
12,000 prisoners and their belongings fell into his hands, and the vic- 
tory was sweeping and complete. He was immediately commissioned 



436 SPEECHES AND ADDRESSES OF WILLIAM McKINLEY. 

Major General of Volunteers, in recognition of his brilliant triumph, 
and at once secured the confidence of the President and trusting 
faith of the loyal North, while the men at the front turned their 
eyes hopefully to their coming commander. His famous dispatch to 
General Buckner, who had proposed commissioners to negotiate for 
capitulation — " No terms except an unconditional and immediate 
surrender can be accepted ; I propose to move immediately upon your 
works " — electrified the country, and sent cheer to every loyal heart 
at home and to the brave defenders in the field. It sounded the 
note of confidence and victory, and gave to the Union cause and 
lovers of the Union new and fervent hope. It breathed conscious 
strength, disclosed immeasurable reserve power, and quickened the 
whole North to grander efforts and loftier patriotism for the preser- 
vation of the Union. [Applause.] 

From that moment, my fellow-citizens, Grant was stamped as a 
soldier raised to conquer, and with almost uninterrupted step he 
won unrivaled victories upon every field he fought. Following 
Donelson came bloody Shiloh, almost lost to the Union arms on the 
first day, turned by his skill and persistent determination into a 
glorious victory on the second. Then luka and Corinth, succeeded 
by a series of desperate engagements — on to the unmatched triumph 
at Vicksburg on Independence Day, 18G3. [Cheers.] This was the 
crowning glory of Grant and his noble army. It surpassed all former 
victories. He literally bagged the Confederate forces under Pember- 
ton. Thirty thousand officers and men stacked their arms and sur- 
rendered to the victorious leader, and nearly two hundred pieces of 
artillery, which had been thundering their deadly missiles against his 
brave army, fell into Union hands. He had won this signal victory 
after repeated assaults, after siege and battle, with the odds against 
him, confronted by a powerful, well-disciplined, and determined 
army, protected by almost impenetrable intrenchments and com- 
manded by one of the ablest of the Confederate generals. He had 
fought it against the advice of political generals and the suggestions 
of the strategic commanders in the rear. He started out to do it, 
and he did it — for that was a habit Grant had. [Cheers and ap- 
plause.] His plans were well conceived and carefully executed. He 
permitted nothing to divert him from his original design. He 
heeded not the clamor of the meddlesome nor the severe criticism of 
envious rivals. He moved right on, steadily, directly, strategically ; 
made no parade of his expected victory ; was without the usual 
trappings and paraphernalia of great commanders. He was on duty, 



ULYSSES S. GRANT. 437 

with earnest work before him, and he relaxed not until he achieved a 
victory without a parallel in American annals. He was promptly com- 
missioned Major General in the Kegular Army. His name became a 
household word ; his pictures were everywhere seen, and made his 
face familiar for the first time to his countrymen ; his fame was the 
theme of every tongue. The press and the platform joined in high- 
est eulogy ; public meetings were held to do him honor ; thanks- 
giving and j^raise went out from every pulpit, and he was at once the 
acknowledged hero of the war. 

President Lincoln jiublicly thanked him, for himself and in the 
name of the people, for " his inestimable services to the Union cause," 
and begged to say to him that during the campaign against Vicks- 
burg he had believed him wrong in his plans, and had little hope of 
his ultimate success, but he wanted to acknowledge that Grant was 
right and he was wrong. "Was ever such generous and manly confes- 
sion made by the Executive of a mighty Nation to one of his subordi- 
nates? Lincoln felt that this acknowledgment was due to Grant, and 
with manly candor publicly proclaimed it. 

In the midst of all these honors the Silent Soldier stood unmoved, 
except with gratitude, and never for a single instant lost his steady 
head. Fawning flattery did not spoil him, nor public acclaim shake 
his rugged nature. He moved among his men and before the country 
the same great, unostentatious, self-reliant commander — such as you 
see in yonder statue unveiled in your beautiful park to-day, erected 
by your friend Mr. Kohlsaat,* here in Galena. [Long-continued 
cheers and applause.] He looked, the first time I saw him, much as 
his statue looks there on the lawn to-day. 

He preserved his even course after Vicksburg. He was better 
than ever equipped for new duties and higher responsibilities, if in 
the wisdom of his countrymen he should be called to assume them. 
He was not content to stop with laurels already won or victories 
I safely achieved. The complete overthrow of the opposing army and 
the downfall of the Confederacy was the victory for which his patri- 
otic soul yearned, and for which his sword was drawn. After Vicks- 
burg he directed the operations at Lookout Mountain and Mission 
Piidge, where " fighting Joe Hooker " led the charging forces up the 
slopes and onward in the " battle among the clouds," and drove the 
enemy in dismay from its mountain fastnesses. Chattanooga now 
being secure to the National troops. General Grant turned his atten- 



* Mr. H. H. Kohlsaat, proprietor of the Chicago Inter-Ocean. 



438 SPEECHES AND ADDRESSES OF WILLIAM McKINLEY. 



tion to relieving Knoxville, which accomplished he was called to the 
East to assume new and greater responsibilities. As a result of his 
sweeping and successive victories, Congress passed a bill creating the 
office of Lieutenant General. It was openly avowed upon the floor 
of the House, and in the Senate, that this new rank was intended 
for the hero of Vicksburg. 

President Lincoln promptly signed the bill, and, in accord with 
his own and the popular judgment, at once nominated Ulysses S. 
Grant for the exalted office just created, and assigned him to the 
command of all the armies of the Union. He was now endowed 
with the military rank previously given to George Washington alone, 
but to no other American soldier. 

It is a remarkable fact that the two great leaders in the mighty 
struggle for the Union met now for the first time. Both from the 
same State, the one the Commander in Chief by the Constitution, the 
other his trusted subordinate in the field, who had received from his 
own hands promotion after promotion in nearly every grade of the 
service to the highest, and always his faithful and unstinted support ; 
yet they never crossed hands nor looked into each other's earnest 
faces until March 9, 18C4, when, in the Cabinet room of the Presi- 
dent, in the presence of his great constitutional advisers, the one 
placed in the hands of the other the high commission which the 
Father of his Country had surrendered back to the Government 
eighty-one years before. [Applause.] And here it is interesting to 
note what the earnest and confiding Lincoln thought of the man 
who henceforth was to sway such mighty power. 

The President was asked by a visitor and friend : " How about 
Grant's generalship ? Is he going to be the man ? " To which he re- 
plied, with great emphasis of tone and gesture : " Grant is the first 
general I've had. He is a general.'''' " How do you mean, Mr. Lin- 
coln?" his visitor asked. " Well, I'll tell you what I mean," replied 
Lincoln ; " you know how it's been with all the rest. As soon as I 
put a man in command of the army he'd come to me with the plan 
of a campaign, and about as much as say, ' Now, I don't believe I 
can do it, but if you say so I'll try it on,' and so put the responsibility 
of success or failure on me. They all wanted me to be the general. 
Now it isn't so with Grant. He hasn't told me what his plans are. 
I don't know them, and I don't want to know. I am glad to find a 
man who can go ahead without me and do something." [Applause.] 

On March 17, 1864, a little more than three years from his de- 
parture from Galena, where he was drilling your local company as a 



ULYSSES S. GRANT. 439 

simple captain, Grant assumed the control of all the Federal forces, 
wherever located, and in less than fourteen months Lee's army, the 
pride and glory of the Confederate Government, surrendered to the 
victorious soldier. It was not a surrender without resistance — skill- 
ful, dogged resistance. It was secured after many battles and fierce 
assaults, accompanied by indescribable toil and suffering, and the loss 
of thousands of precious lives. The battles of the Wilderness, Spott- 
sylvania, North Anna and Cold Harbor, and the siege of Petersburg, 
witnessed the hardest fighting and the severest sacrifices of the war, 
while the loss of brave men in the trenches was simply appalling. The 
historian has wearied in detailing them, and the painter's hand has 
palsied with reproducing the scenes of blood and carnage there en- 
acted. General Grant not only directed the forces in front of Eich- 
mond, but the entire line of operation of all our armies was under his 
skillful hand and was moved by his masterful mind. The entire field 
was the theater of his thought, and to his command all moved as a 
symmetrical whole, harmonious to one purpose, centering upon one 
grand design. In obedience to his orders, Sherman was marching 
fighting, and winning victories with his splendid army in Georgia, 
extending our victorious banners farther and deeper into the heart of 
the Confederacy; and all the while the immortal Thomas was engag- 
ing the enemy in another part of the far-stretching field, diverting 
and defeating the only army which might successfully impede the tri- 
umphant march of Sherman to the sea. Sheridan, of whom General 
Grant said the only instruction he ever required was " to go in," was 
going into the Shenandoah Valley, that disputed field, the scene of 
Stonewall Jackson's fame. Hei'e his dashing army driving by storm 
and strategy the determined forces of Early, sent them whirling back, 
stripped of laurels previously won, without either their artillery or 
battle flags. Schofield had done grand work at Franklin, and later 
occui^ied Wilmington and Goldsboro, on the distant seacoast, with a 
view to final connection with Sherman. These movements and more, 
absorbed the mind of the great commander. 

Sheridan soon left nothing in the Shenandoah Valley to fight, 
and was called to Grant's side to command all the cavalry in the 
final and triumphant conflict which was to be waged against the 
chivalrous forces of Lee. Then the fighting was in earnest all along 
the line — with a desperation born of conviction, with a determination 
not to be thwarted by any host nor turned back by any slaughter. I 
could not and would not undertake to describe those closing scenes. 
They were mighty in conception, quick and irresistible in execution, 



440 SPEECHES AND ADDRESSES OP WILLIAM McKINLEY. 

bold almost to rashness. Sweeping like a mighty storm, unchecked 
by any resistance, right on in the face of death, until the great goal, 
for which so many had fought and fallen and so many had prayed 
and wept, was reached. The Army of Northern Virginia surrendered 
to the matchless Ulysses, and the wicked conspiracy to destroy the 
Union was dead — forever dead. [Great applause.] The Union was 
saved with Liberty, and we pray both may be eternal. 

The liberal terms given to Lee at Appomattox revealed in the 
breast of the hard fighter a soft and generous heart. He wanted no 
vengeance ; he had no bitterness in his soul ; he had no hates to 
avenge. He believed in war only as a means of peace. His large, 
brave, gentle nature made the surrender as easy to his illustrious foe 
as was possible. He said with the broadest humanity : " Take your 
horses and side arms, all of your personal property and belongings, 
and go home, not to be disturbed, not to be punished for treason, not 
to be outcasts, but go, cultivate the fields whereon you fought and 
lost. Yield faithful allegiance to the old flag and the restored Union, 
and obey the laws of peace." Was ever such magnanimity before 
shown by victor to vanquished ? Here closed the great war, and with 
it the active military career of the great commander. 

His civil administration covered eight years — two full terms as 
President of the United States. This new exaltation was not of his 
own seeking. He preferred to remain General of the Army, with 
which he had been so long associated and in which he had acquired 
his great fame. The country, however, was determined that the suc- 
cessful soldier should be its civil ruler. The loyal people felt that 
they owed him the highest honors which the Nation could bestow, 
and they called him from the military to the civil head of the Gov- 
ernment. His term commenced in March, 1869, and ended in March, 
1877. It constituted one of the most important periods of our Na- 
tional life. If the period of "Washington's administration involved 
the formation of the Union, that of Grant's was confronted with its 
reconstruction, after the bitter, relentless, internal struggle to destroy 
it. It was a most delicate era in which to rule. It would have been 
difficult, embarrassing, and hazardous to any man, no matter how 
gifted or what his previous preparation or equipment might have 
been. Could any one have done better than he? — we will not pause 
to discuss. Different oi^inions prevail, and on this occasion we do 
not enter the field of controversy ; but, speaking for myself, I believe 
he was exactly the man for the place, and that he filled to its full 
measure the trust to which his fellow-citizens called him. He com- 



I 



ULYSSES S. GRANT. 44I 

mitted errors. Who could have escaped them, at such a time and in 
such a place ? He stood in his civil station battling for the legitimate 
fruits of the war, that they might be firmly secured to the living and to 
their posterity forever. His arm was never lifted against the right ; his 
soul abhorred the wrong. His veto of the Inflation Bill ; his organiza- 
tion of the Geneva Arbitration Commission to settle the claims of the 
United States against England ; his strong but conciliatory foreign 
policy; his constant care to have no policy against the will of the 
people ; his enforcement of the Constitution and its Amendments in 
every part of the Republic; his maintenance of the credit of the 
Government and its good faith at home and abroad, marked his ad- 
ministration as strong, wise, and patriotic. Great and wise as his 
civil administration was, however, the achievements which make him 
" one of the immortal few whose names will never die " are found in 
his military career. Carping critics have sought to mar it, strategists 
have found flaws in it, but in the presence of his successive, uninter- 
rupted, and unrivaled victories it is the idlest chatter, which none 
should heed. He was always ready to fight. If beaten to-day, he 
resumed battle on the morrow ; and his pathway was all along crowned 
with victories and surrenders, which silence criticism, and place him 
side by side with the mighty soldiers of the world. [Applause.] 

With no disparagement to others, two names rise above all tlie 
rest in American history since George Washington — transcendently 
above them. They are Abraham Lincoln and Ulysses S. Grant. 
[Api^lause.] Each will be remembered for what he did and accom- 
plished for his race and for mankind. Lincoln proclaimed liberty to 
four million slaves, and upon his act invited " the considerate judg- 
ment of mankind and the gracious favor of Almighty God." He has 
received the warm approval of the one, and I am sure he is enjoying 
the generous benediction of the other. His was the greatest, mighti- 
est stroke of the war. Grand on its humanity side, masterly in its 
military aspect, it has given to his name an imperishable place among 
men. Grant gave irresistible power and efficacy to the Proclamation 
of Liberty. The iron shackles which Lincoln declared should be 
loosed from the limbs and souls of the black slaves, Grant with his 
matchless army melted and destroyed in the burning glories of the 
war ; and the rebels read the inspired decree in the flashing guns of 
his artillery, and they knew what Lincoln had decreed Grant would 
execute. [Applause.] 

He had now filled the full measure of human ambition and drunk 
from every fountain of earthly glory. He had commanded mighty 



44:2 SPEECHES AND ADDRESSES OP WILLIAM McKINLEY. 



legions upon a hundred victorious fields. He had borne grave re- 
sponsibilities and exercised almost limitless power. He had exe- 
cuted every trust with fidelity, and, in the main, with consummate 
skill. He had controlled the movement of a larger army than had 
been commanded by any other soldier, the world over, since the inven- 
tion of firearms. [Applause.] He was made General of the United 
States Army by Congress on July 25, 1866 — a rank and title never 
given to American soldier before. He had won the lasting gratitude 
of his fellow-countrymen, and whenever and wherever he went among 
them they crowned him with fresh manifestations of their love and 
veneration — and no reverses of fortune, no errors of judgment, no 
vexatious and unfortunate business complications ever shook their 
trustful confidence. [Applause.] When he sought rest in other 
lands, crowned heads stood uncovered in his presence and laid their 
trophies at his feet, while the struggling toiler, striving for a larger 
liberty, offered his earnest tribute to the great warrior who had 
made liberty universal in the Republic. Everywhere he went grate- 
ful honors greeted him, and he was welcomed as no American had 
been before. He girded the globe with his renown as he journeyed in 
the pathway of the sun. [Applause.] Nothing of human longing 
or aspiration remained unsatiated. He had enjoyed all the honors 
which his lavish countrymen could bestow, and had received the re- 
spectful homage of foreign nations. 

His private life was beautiful in its purity and simplicity. No 
irreverent oath passed his lips, and his conversation was as chaste 
and unaffected as that of simple childhood. His relations with his 
family were tender and affectionate, and with his officers and soldiers 
cordial and considerate. He was a typical American, free from osten- 
tation, easily approached. His whole life gave proof of his nation- 
ality — a man from the people, of the people, for the people, and 
never above the people. [Applause.] 

For weeks during the siege of Vicksburg he was without baggage 
or servant, camp chest or tent, sharing the rations of the private 
soldier, and sleeping on the ground with no covering but the heavens 
above him. On one occasion, in the Department he was command- 
ing, steamboat captains discriminated against the private soldier, and 
would not permit him to ride as a cabin passenger on equal terms 
with officers and the traveling public generally. This coming to the 
General's knowledge, he issued an immediate and peremptory order 
forbidding such un-American treatment, and punishing with extreme 
severity any future discriminations against the bravest and best — his 



ULYSSES S. GRANT. 443 

allies in the great conflict. His tenderness and respect for the volun- 
teer soldier was proverbial in every army wherein he served, and any 
slight to him Grant always repelled as a personal indignity. 

Only a few years ago, in one of his journeys through the South, 
when he was receiving a great ovation, some colored men crowded his 
hotel to look into the face and to grasp the hand of their great de- 
liverer. To this intrusion objection was made, and the colored men 
were about to be ejected, when the General appeared, and in his 
quiet way, full of earnest feeling, said : " Where I am they shall come 
also." [Great applause.] He believed in the brotherhood of man — 
in the political equality of all men — he had secured that with his 
sword, and was prompt to recognize it in all places and everywhere. 

But, my friends, Death had marked him for a victim. He fought 
Death with his iron will and his old-time courage, but at last yielded, 
the first and only time the great soldier was ever vanquished. He had 
routed every other foe, he had triumphed over every other enemy, 
but this last one conquered him, as in the end he conquers all. He, 
however, stayed his fatal hand long enough to permit Grant to finish 
the last great work of his life — to write the history he had made. 
True, that history had been already written — written in blood, in the 
agony of the dying and in the tears of the suffering Nation ; written 
in the hearts of her patriotic people. The ready pens of others had 
told more than a thousand times the matchless story ; the artist had, 
a hundred times, placed upon canvas the soul-stirring scenes in which 
Grant was the central figure ; the sculptor had cut its every phase in 
enduring marble, yet a kind Providence mercifully spared him a few 
months longer, that he who had seen it and directed it should sum up 
the great work wrought by the grand army of the Republic under 
his magic guidance. He was not an old man when he died, but, after 
all, what a completed life was his ! 

Mighty events and mightier achievements were never crowded 
into a single life before, and he lived to place them in enduring form, 
to be read by the millions living and the millions yet unborn. Then 
laying down his pen, he bowed resignedly before the Angel of Death, 
saying : " If it is God's providence that I shall go now, I am ready to 
obey his will without a murmur," Great in life, majestic in death ! 
He needs no monument to perpetuate his fame ; it will live and 
glow with increased luster so long as liberty lasts and the love of 
liberty has a place in the hearts of men. Every soldiers' monument 
throughout the North now standing or hereafter to be erected will 
record his worth and work as well as those of the brave men who 
29 



444 SPEECHES AND ADDRESSES OP WILLIAM McKINLEY. 

fought by his side. His most lasting memorial will be the work he 
did, his most enduring monument the Union which he and his heroic 
associates saved, and the priceless liberty they secured. 

Surrounded by a devoted family, with a mind serene and a heart 
resigned, he passed over to join his fallen comrades beyond the river, 
on another field of glory. Above him in his chamber of sickness and 
death hung the portraits of Washington and Lincoln, whose disem- 
bodied spirits in the Eternal City were watching and waiting for him 
who was to complete the immortal trio of America's first and best 
loved ; and as the earthly scenes receded from his view and the 
celestial appeared, I can imagine these were the first to greet his 
sight and bid him welcome. 

We are not a Nation of hero worshipers. We are a Nation of 
generous freemen. We bow in affectionate reverence and with most 
grateful hearts to these immortal names, Washington, Lincoln, and 
Grant, and will guard with sleepless vigilance their mighty work and 
cherish their memories evermore. 



" They were the luster lights of their day, 
The . . . giants, 
Who clave the darkness asunder 
And beaconed us where we are." 



COMMITTEE MEETINGS. 

Speech in the House of Eepresentatiyes, Fiftt-fiest 
Congress, May 14, 1890. 

\^From the Congressional Record.'] 

The ITouse being in Committee of the Whole, and having under considera- 
tion the bill (H. R. 9,416) to reduce the revenue and equalize the duty on imports 
and for other purposes, Mr. McKinley said — 

Mr. Chairman : I want to say there has not been a single in- 
terest in this country that asked for a hearing before the Ways and 
Means Committee that has not been heard. [Applause on the Ee- 
publican side.] Manufacturers, laborers, consumers, importers, con- 
signors, consignees — free-traders and protectionists — all who have 
presented themselves at the door of the Committee on Ways and 
Means have been heard [applause], and they are being heard now 
while we are considering this bill in the House. This morning at 
half past nine o'clock the Committee met, and sat continuously until 
eleven, to hear a gentleman upon certain schedules. We are to meet 
to-morrow morning ; and we shall continue to meet and hear all the 
great interests of this country until this bill shall finally be passed 
through this House. [Applause.] 

I want to say another thing, Mr. Chairman. The imputation of 
the gentleman from Indiana [Mr. Bynum] that we have closed up 
the passage to this Hall in order that we might have a private con- 
sultation room for members of the majority of the Committee is false ; 
it is untrue. [Applause on the Kei^ublican side.] I want to say to 
him that the Committee on Ways and Means, crowded as it was by 
the representatives of the great interests of the country, found that it 
had no room for consultation, no room in which the Committee could 
go into executive session. Every member of that Committee, Demo- 
crat and Eepublican, signed a request to the Speaker of this House 
asking to have an additional room, a private room, assigned to the 



446 SPEECHES AND ADDRESSES OF WILLIAM McKINLEY. 



Committee ; and the selection of the room was made by the Speaker, 
in company with Mr. Carlisle, the leader on the other side of the 
House, and myself, it being the best we could possibly do under 
the circumstances. 

I want to say further that the minority of the Ways and Means 
Committee have always had access to that room — Is not that so, gen- 
tlemen of the minority ? — and have used it whenever they wanted to 
use it. And when they were prej^aring their minority report they 
had almost exclusive use of that Committee room. Mr. Chairman, I 
do not permit any man to impute to the majority of that Committee 
improper motives or want of courtesy toward the minority. The 
minority members know that any imputation of that kind is abso- 
lutely false, and, if made, is made by some one ignorant of the per- 
sonal relations of the gentlemen on that Committee. [Applause on 
the Republican side.] 

I supposed I had stated, but, if not, I want to say now, that the 
farmers have been fully heard by the Committee. The President of 
the National Grange and his associates have been before the Com- 
mittee over and over again. Only yesterday we heard the Farmers' 
Alliance ; we heard them again to-day, and we have agreed to hear 
them to-morrow, and the next day if necessary, for the completion of 
the arguments which they desire to present. And while I am on my 
feet I wish to say that we not only heard everybody that I have 
named, but we heard also at great length the " Parsee merchant," 
Mr. J. S. Moore, a gentleman who is known to be almost the leader 
of the Democratic party upon the revenue-tariff theory which they 
advocate here. [Laughter and applause on the Republican side.] 



WILLIAM D. KELLEY. 

Address in the House of Represextatives, Fifty-first 
Congress, March 15, 1890. 

[From the Congressional Becord.] 

Mr. Speaker : I can not refrain from claiming for a moment or 
two the attention of the House to bring my tribute of respect and 
affection to my old friend, for whom living I had the most affection- 
ate regard, and whose death takes from all of us an honorable asso- 
ciate, a wise counselor, and from some of us a very close and dear 
friend. I first met Judge Kelley in the Forty-fifth Congress. In 
the following Congress I was associated with him on the Committee 
on Ways and Means, and from that time until the close of the last 
Congress I served with the distinguished statesman on that Commit- 
tee, to which he devoted so much of the labor of his life, and with 
whose business, for almost a quarter of a century, his name will long 
be associated and gratefully remembered. 

No eulogy that I could speak would do justice to the noble life 
which has closed. His life-work is his highest eulogy. What he 
wrought for his fellow-men and the impress he made upon the legis- 
lation of the country will be his best and most enduring memorial. 
That which most impressed me in my long acquaintance with him 
was his thoroughness, his industry, his capacity for work, his sturdy 
integrity, his wide range of information. Every subject he touched 
he became master of. Not content with scratching the crust merely, 
he penetrated the strata and foundation, and his public speeches and 
contributions to magazines evidenced a grasp of the subjects he was 
considering which few men possess. He was a great student, and did 
his work with method and therefore with dispatch. The long hours 
he gave to his public duties, to the critical investigation of the ques- 
tions with which he was charged as a member of the House, will 
never be known, and they told awfully upon his strength. His work 



448 SPEECHES AND ADDRESSES OP WILLIAM McKINLEY. 



in his Committee was of the most laborious character ; the days were 
too short, and the niglits wliicli should have been given to rest were 
exacted by the stern demands of duties placed upon him. 

His intellectual resources were almost without limit. His knowl- 
edge of economic, financial, and scientific questions was vast and com- 
prehensive. He was not only a reader of books and of current litera- 
ture, but a keen and intelligent observer of forces, of causes, and 
events. Scarcely a subject could be discussed with which he was 
not familiar and which was not illuminated from his storehouse of 
knowledge. His work in the Forty-seventh Congress as Chairman 
of the Committee on Ways and Means so drained his vital forces as 
to be the beginning of that physical impairment which ended in his 
death. It was a fearful draught upon his strength. 

As a student and master of political economy he was probably 
without a superior in the present generation ; and as the advocate of 
the doctrine of protection he was for twenty years the unquestioned 
leader, always in the very front rank, always on the extreme outpost. 
He was devoted to the principle, because it was a conviction with 
him, and because he believed it would best subserve the interests of 
his fellow-citizens and secure the highest prosperity of his country. 
His name in that field of public duty will pass into history linked 
with the name of that other great protectionist, Henry Clay. 

As an orator, at his best he was powerful and persuasive. His 
voice was full and musical ; his sentences were clear and rhetorical ; 
his information was great and his illustrations were always striking 
and forceful. I recall some of his speeches in this Hall as the most 
impressive I have ever listened to; and whether on this floor or on 
the hustings, where vast crowds delighted to greet him, he carried 
his audiences by the irresistible force of his logic and the fervor of 
his eloquence. 

He was an honest man, and that, after all, counts most and is 
best. Never did suspicion fasten upon him — he was far above it. 
For thirty years in public life, a member of the House of Representa- 
tives during the war, with its waste and destruction, followed by 
doubtful schemes and wild speculations ; called upon as he was to 
deal with great public and private interests, and much of the time in 
touch and control of legislation which affected vast enterprises, while 
others fell before the temptations of the hour, he passed through all 
unscathed and unsullied, uncorrupted and incorruptible, and leaves 
to his family, his friends and his countrymen that highest of all hon- 
orable titles, an honest man. 



WILLIAM D. KELLEY. 449 

He had a wonderful hold upon the people, and especially so upon 
his immediate constituency. For thirty years he represented the same 
district ; fifteen times in succession he was returned to this House by 
an intelligent and discriminating constituency ; and while not at all 
times in accord upon every public question with those he represented, 
such confidence did his people have in his honesty and capacity and 
usefulness that they would elect no other Representative to displace 
him. This was a rare distinction, given, I believe, to no other man 
of the present or past, no other statesman living or dead ; and at the 
end he was more firmly intrenched in the respect and affection of his 
people than at any other period of his career. 

He devoted his whole life, his vigorous youth, his matured man- 
hood, and his declining strength and energy — to the public service, 
and his name will be associated with the greatest events of our Na- 
tional history. That public which he served so well owes him a debt 
that it can never repay. Men of all classes and conditions turned 
to him as their friend, and he served them faithfully and well. We 
shall miss him from these halls. We have already missed him. 

We will honor him most by emulating his many virtues. 



FREE MATERIALS FOR THE FOREIGN TRADE. 

Speech in the House of Representatives, Fifty-first 
Congress, May 17, 1890. 

[From the Congressional Eecord.] 

The House having under consideration the bill (H. R. 9,416) to reduce the 
revenue and equalize duties on imports, the question being upon agreeing to the 
amendment allowing a drawback equal in amount to the duties paid, less one per 
cent, Mr. McKinley said — 

Mr. Chairman : I simply want to say that this rebate principle 
has existed in our law since 1797, and in every tariff bill that has ever 
been presented by either side of the House a rebate upon imported 
materials for manufacture and export has always been recognized 
and encouraged. I want to call the gentleman from Ohio's [Mr. 
Owens] attention also to the fact that in the Forty-eighth Congress, 
which was controlled by his own party, when the Chairman of the 
Committee on Ways and Means was the distinguished gentleman 
from Illinois [Mr. Morrison], that Committee, without a dissenting 
vote, reported a bill recommending a drawback, not of 99 per cent, 
but of 100 per cent, upon all imported materials that entered into 
manufactures for the export trade. And, Mr. Chairman, let me read 
what was said upon that subject by Mr. Hewitt, of New York, a busi- 
ness man and an accomplished statesman. Mr. Hewitt said : 

The general idea is to remove all unnecessary obstacles to the growth of our 
domestic industries and to its competition in the open markets of the world with 
the products of other countries. A tax upon raw materials which enter into our 
exports is a practical bonus to other nations who do not pay such taxes. It is un- 
doubtedly a wise policy to give as much employment as possible to our own peo- 
ple, and this object is obtained when we prepare the commodities entirely ready for 
use, instead of shipping them in a cruder form to be manufactured elsewhere. 
No domestic interest will be injured by the return of the duty on the materials 
thus exported ; but many branches of domestic industry will be greatly benefited 
and enlarged. 

That is the language of Mr. Hewitt, of your own Committee on 
Ways and Means in the Forty-eighth Congress ; and if rebates are a 



FREE MATERIALS FOR THE FOREIGN TRADE. 451 

" bribe" as the gentleman from Ohio [Mr. Owens] declares, your 
Democratic Committee offered the largest bribe that has ever been 
offered by any Congress since the foundation of the Government. 
[Applause on the Republican side.] I ask the Clerk to read the re- 
port of Mr. Hewitt to which I have referred : 

The Committee on Ways and Means report bill H. R. 7651, entitled " A bill 
to amend section 3019 of the Revised Statutes, relating to drawbacks on duties 
on imported material when manufactured and exported," with a recommendation 
that the same be enacted into law. As the law now stands, 90 per cent of the 
duty which has been collected on foreign materials used in manufactures and ex- 
ported in manufactured form is refunded to the manufacturer; in the case of 
sugar, 99 per cent is so refunded. The theory of the law was to retain a sufficient 
amount of duty to cover the cost of keeping accounts, but in practice it has been 
found that only about one tenth of 1 per cent is necessary for the purpose. Inas- 
much as it is desirable to remove all possible obstacles to the growth of our 
export trade, the Committee are of opinion, which is concurred in by the Secre- 
tary of the Treasury, that it is no longer wise to retain any portion of the duties 
which have been collected on materials thus exported. The general idea is to 
remove all unnecessary obstacles to the growth of our domestic industry, and to 
its competition in the open markets of the world with the products of other coun- 
tries. A tax upon the raw materials which enter into our exports is to that ex- 
tent a practical bonus to other nations who do not pay such taxes. It is undoubt- 
edly a wise policy to give as miich employment as possible to our own people, and 
this object is attained when we prepare the commodities entirely ready for use, 
instead of shipping them in a cruder form to be manufactured elsewhere. No 
domestic interest will be injured by the return of the duty on materials thus ex- 
ported, but many branches of domestic industry will be greatly benefited and 
enlarged. 

Your Committee therefore recommend the passage of the bill. 

Also the following letter, w^hich accompanied that reiDort : 

Treasury Department, January 9, 1885. 
Sir; I am in receipt of your letter of this date, inclosing a bill introduced by 
you into the House of Representatives, entitled " A bill to amend section 3019 of 
the Revised Statutes, relating to drawback of duties on articles exported, manu- 
factured in the United States out of foreign materials.'" Section 3019, Revised 
Statutes, which relates to drawback on exported articles, provides for the reten- 
tion of 10 per cent of the duties upon the materials entering into the manufacture 
of the exported article. The object of this bill is to abolish the retention of 10 
per cent, so as to pay back all the duties exacted upcn the materials. The bill 
follows the exact language of section 3019, Revised Statutes, down to and includ- 
ing the word " Treasury," but omits the requirement of the retention of 10 per 
cent. I think the language of the bill is well calculated to accomplish the object 
in view, and it does not occur to me that any other form would improve it in 
that respect. Very respectfully, 

Hugh McCulloch, Secretary. 
Hon. M. C. George, House of Representatives, Washington, D. C. 



THE DUTY ON SUGAR 

Speech in the House of EEPRESE^'TATIVES, Fifty-fikst 
Congress, May 20, 1890. 

[From the Congressional Record.] 

The House having under consideration the bill (H. R. 9,41G) to reduce the 
revenue and equalize duties on imports, Mr. McKinley said — 

Mr. Chairman : The Committee on Ways and Means, looking to 
the average sentiment of the country, wishing on the one hand to 
give the people free and cheap sugar, and desiring on the other hand 
to do no harm to this great industry in our midst, have recommended 
an entire abolition of all duties upon sugar ; and then, mindful as 
we have ever been of our own industries, we turn about and give to 
this industry two cents upon every pound of sugar produced in the 
United States, a sum equal to the duties now imposed upon foreign 
sugar imported into this country. "We have thus given the people 
free and cheap sugar, and at the same time we have given to our pro- 
ducers, with their invested capital, absolute and complete protection 
against the cheaper sugar produced by the cheaper labor of other 
countries. Now, what have we accomplished by this? We pay an- 
nually 155,000,000 upon the sugar we import. The gentlemen on the 
other side claim rightfully that this is a revenue duty. It is a revenue 
duty ; it is a Democratic duty ; and, being a Democratic revenue 
duty, every dollar of it is paid by the American consumer. Last 
year we paid 855,000,000 out of our own pockets to protect whom ? 
To protect the men in the United States who are producing just one 
eighth of the amount of our consumption of sugar. Now we wipe 
that out, and it will cost us to pay the bounty just $7,000,000 every 
twelve months which furnishes the same protection at very much 
less cost to the consumer. So we save 148,000,000 every year, and 
leave that vast sum in the pockets of our own people. [Applause on 
the Republican side.] 

Why, my friend from Kentucky [Mr. Breckinridge] talks about 
the number of houses that could be built if we would only remove 
the tariff upon cotton and woolen goods. Sir, when we lift from the 
American people this vast sum of $48,000,000 of taxes they can put 



THE DUTr ON SUGAR. 453 

up every twelve months, 48,000 houses, costing $1,000 apiece. " Ah, 
but," they say, " this appropriation will not last." Some gentleman 
on the other side says that if we should pass this bill a Democratic 
Congress would refuse to make the appropriation. Fearing that — 
fearing that the Democratic party would do such a gross injustice to 
a great American industry— we have provided in the bill that the 
sum required for bounties shall be a permanent appropriation. [Ap- 
plause on the Eepublican side.] But my time is almost consumed, 
and I must hurry on. 

The gentleman from Texas [Mr. Mills] said the other day that 
the bill that we had reported to the House gave more duties and pro- 
tection to the sugar refiners than the bill which he brought into the 
House in the last Congress. I think he must have by inadvertence 
made that statement. Let me tell you what his bill did for the re- 
finers of the United States. His bill placed sugar of 75 degrees at 
$1.15 ; sugar of 90 degrees at $1.63 ; sugar from No. 13 to No. IG at 
$3.20 ; sugar from No. 16 to No. 20 at S2.40 ; and above No. 20 it 
gave a duty of $2.81. He gave as a differential duty, commencing at 
No. 13 and running up to No. 16, .57 of one per cent to the sugar re- 
finers of the United States. We give no duty to the sugar refiners up 
to No. 16. Above 16 and up to 20 he gave them .77 ; we give them 
.40, just .37 less than was given by the Mills bill. Above 20 he gave 
$1.17, and we give .40 — just .77 less than the Mills bill gave to the 
refiners of the United States. [Applause on the Republican side.] 

The refiners should have whatever duty will protect them against 
their foreign rivals in the difference of the labor cost. But my friend 
from Tennessee tells us that because we have reduced the differential 
duties below the Mills bill we have sent up the trust certificates. 
Now, since that statement was made I have received, and hold in my 
hand, a letter from the President of the Havemeyer Sugar Eefinery, 
in which he says : 

New Yoke, May 12, 1890. 
Dear Sir: Referring to the use made in the House of the fact that sugar cer- 
tificates have advanced since the publication of the Committee's schedule, I de- 
sire to say that it is not true, as charged, that the advance has been caused by such 
schedule. The simple fact is, that the advance is a reaction from the very low 
prices, and due to the manipulation of Wall Street operators, who put the stock 
down from 115 to 50 at a time when the old tariff was undisturbed and the busi- 
ness more prosperous than now. Now they are on the other side. It is not just 
that the sugar schedule in the bill before the House should be held accountable 
for the action of a speculative clique who are not connected with nor controlled 
by the sugar- refining companies. Yours, very respectfully, 

Jno. E. Searles, Jr. 



THE SILVER BILL. 

Speech in the House of Representatives, Fifty-first 
Congress, June 25, 1890. 

[From the Congressional Record.'] 

The House having under consideration the bill (H, R. 5,381) directingthe pur- 
chase of silver bullion, and the issue of Treasury notes thereon, with various 
amendments by the Senate, Mr. McKinley said— 

Mr. Speaker: It seems to me that the subject now under con- 
sideration is grave enough in every aspect to cause us, even at this 
last moment of the discussion, to pause and thoughtfully consider 
whether by our votes here to-day we shall reverse the well-established 
financial policy of the country. From 1793 to 1873 we had the free 
and unlimited coinage of silver in the United States, the two metals 
fluctuating in value from time to time, rarely if ever at a parity, 
sometimes so varying and unequal that the President of the United 
States was compelled to suspend the coinage of the silver dollar — 
a rule made by Jefferson in 1805 and followed for thirty years after- 
ward. What we are considering here to-day, and what we have been 
considering almost without interruption for the last ten days, has 
been only the struggle of the century which has vexed the statesmen 
of all periods of our history, and that struggle has been to preserve 
the concurrent circulation of gold and silver, each on a parity with 
the other. And we have never been able to do it until now. At no 
time in the history of the United States have gold and silver so circu- 
lated side by side, in equal volume, as gold and silver have circulated 
concurrently since 1878. 

Now I believe, Mr. Speaker, that we should preserve these two 
moneys side by side. And it is because I want to preserve these equal 
standards of value that I have opposed and shall oppose concurrence 
in the Senate amendments. I do not want gold at a premium, I 
do not want silver at a discount, or vice versa, but I want both metals 
side by side, equal in purchasing power and in legal-tender quality, 
equal in power to perform the functions of money with which to do the 
business and move the commerce of the United States. To tell me 
that the free and unlimited coinage of the silver of the world, in the 



THE SILVER BILL. 455 

absence of co-operation on the part of other commercial nations, will 
not bring gold to a premium, is to deny all history and the weight of 
all financial experience. The very instant that yon have opened up our 
mints to the silver bullion of the world independently of international 
action, that very instant, or in a brief time at best, you have sent gold to 
a premium ; and when you have sent gold to a premium, then you have 
put it in great measure into disuse, and we are remitted to the sin- 
gle standard, that of silver alone ; we have deprived ourselves of the 
active use of both metals. It is only because of the safe and conserv- 
ative financial policy of the Republican party, aided by the conserv- 
ative men of both parties, which has more than once received the 
approval of the country, that since 1878 by our legislation we have 
compelled gold and silver to work together upon an equality, both 
employed as safe means of exchange in the business of our country. 
Let the bullion of the world come into this market from Europe and 
Asia, and then, whether gold flows out of this country or not, it flows 
out of the channels of business and the avenues of trade, and we are 
in danger of being driven to the use of silver alone. I oppose the 
Senate amendments because I want the use of both silver and gold. 
The gentlemen who favor the amendments of the Senate want silver 
to do the work alone, to be the sole agency of our exchanges. Those 
of us who believe in conservative legislation want to utilize both metals 
and make both respond to the wants of trade. They talk about silver 
being cheap money. And gentlemen no longer conceal on that side 
and on this that the reason they want silver is because it is cheap. I 
am not attracted by the word " cheap," whether applied to nations 
or to men, or whether it is applied to money. Whatever dollars we 
have in this country must be good dollars, as good in the hands of 
the poor as the rich ; equal dollars, equal in inherent merit, equal in 
purchasing power, whether they be paper dollars, or gold dollars, or 
silver dollars, or Treasury notes — each convertible into the other and 
each exchangeable for the other, because each is based upon equal 
value and has behind it equal security ; good not by the fiat of law 
alone, but good because the whole commercial world recognizes its in- 
herent and inextinguishable value. There should be no speculative 
features in our money, no opportunity for speculation in the exchanges 
of the people. They must be safe and stable. And I stand here to- 
day speaking not for a single section, but for my country and for the 
whole country. I say that it is for the highest and best interests of all 
that, whatever money we have, it must be based upon both gold and 
silver, and represent the best money in the world. [Loud applause.] 



THE FEDERAL ELECTION BILL. 

Speech in the House of Representatives, Fifty-first 
Congress, July 2, 1890. 

[From the Co7igressional Record.'] 

The House having under consideration the bill (H. R. 11,045) to amend and 
supplement the election laws of the United States, Mr. McKinley said — 

Mr. Speaker : I rise only to say that, in my judgment, it will not 
do to adopt the amendment proposed by the gentleman from South 
Carolina [Mr. Hemphill] ; nor is the interpretation he places upon 
the section justified by its language. If his amendment is passed by 
this House, it will take from the President of the United States all 
the power he would have under section 1989 to enforce judicial pro- 
cesses under the provisions of the bill now being considered by the 
House. And it must be remembered that in the bill we are now 
considering the judiciary has very much to do with its administra- 
tion ; and judicial processes will be constantly and ever recurring in 
the course of the administration of this law. Therefore I say, if we 
should pass this amendment to-day, Ave deprive the President of the 
United States of a power which he has held since the foundation of 
the Government, to use the Army and the Navy to execute the judicial 
processes of the Federal courts of the land. You might just as well 
destroy this bill at once if you deprive the United States Govern- 
ment, through its Chief Executive, of the authority to use the entire 
Federal force of the Government to execute the judicial processes 
under the proposed measure. "We must not take from the Govern- 
ment the power to execute judicial decrees and processes of its own 
courts, and this amendment should be voted down. 

And now, Mr. Speaker, having said that, I want to add that this 
bill ought to be passed. I have not indulged in this discussion here- 
tofore. This bill may not be, in all its provisions, what I would like 
to have it, but it is a bill looking to an honest representation on 



THE FEDERAL ELECTION BILL. 457 

the floor of the American House of Representatives, and to honest 
voting and the fair counting of votes in every part and section of 
the American Republic. [Apjilause on the Republican side.] That 
is all there is of the bill, and no honest man can object to it, and no 
lover of fair play can afford to oppose it. It is said that this measure 
is harsh. It will rest heavily only upon districts and upon States 
which violate the laws and the Constitution of our common country. 
Let every citizen of this Republic vote, and then see to it that his vote 
is counted as it is cast and returned as counted, and you never need 
invoke any of the provisions of the bill or subject yourselves to Avhat 
you term its harsh provisions. [Applause on the Republican side.] 

But they say that it is expensive ; that it will cost $10,000,000, to 
be taken out of the National Treasury. That assumes that the three 
hundred and thirty districts of this country will invoke the operation 
of the law. But there is not a man on this floor who does not know 
that not a hundred districts in the United States will invoke its oper- 
ation when it goes into effect. It will not be required even in that 
number. And let me remind gentlemen on the other side of this 
Chamber, as well as my friends on this side of the Chamber, that you 
will diminish the cost of the administration of this bill in the ratio 
that you diminish fraudulent voting, false counting, stuffing of ballot- 
boxes, and suppressing the voice of the Republicans in the South. 
[Applause on the Republican side.] It will cost nothing if it is not 
used, and it will not be used if there is no need for it. Honest elec- 
tions will make the law unnecessary ; dishonest ones should be stopped 
by the strong arm of the law. 

My friend from Mississippi [Mr. Allen] quotes from General 

Grant. Let me quote from an utterance of his, made in speaking of 

the condition of affairs in Mississippi, the gentleman's own State. 

Said President Grant : 

How long these things are to continue or what is to be the final remedy the 
Great Ruler of the Universe only knows ; but I have an abiding faith that the 
remedy will come, and come speedily, and earnestly hope it will come peacefully. 

Let me quote from him another utterance made two years before 
his death. Speaking of this very question of the suffrage, he said it 
would '"'■ never he settled until every man wlio counts, or rej^resents 
those wJio do coimt, shall cast one ballot and have that ballot counted 
precisely as he cast it.^^ [Applause on the Republican side.] 

Now, I want to say here to-day, for I have but a few moments, 
that this question will not rest until justice is done ; and the con- 
sciences of the American people will not be permitted to slumber 



458 SPEECHES AND ADDRESSES OP WILLIAM McKINLEY. 

until this great constitutional right — the equality of suffrage, the 
equality of opportunity, freedom of political action and political 
thought — shall be not the mere cold formalities of constitutional en- 
actment as now, but a living birthright which the poorest and the 
humblest citizen, white or black, native-born or naturalized, may 
confidently enjoy, and which the richest and most powerful dare 
not deny. [Prolonged applause on the Republican side.] 

Mr. Speaker and gentlemen of the House, remember that God 
puts no nation in supreme place which will not do supreme duty. 
[Applause on the Republican side.] God keeps no nation in supreme 
place which will not perform the supreme duty of the hour [renewed 
applause], and He will not long prosper that nation which will not 
protect and defend its weakest citizens. It is our supreme duty to 
enforce the Constitution and laws of the United States "and dare to 
be strong for the weak." Gentlemen of the other side, I appeal to 
you to obey the laws and Constitution ; obey them as we obey and 
observe them ; for I tell you the people of the North will not con- 
tinue to permit two votes in the South to count as much as five votes 
in the North. [Prolonged applause on the Republican side.] 



THE FIFTY-FIRST CONGEESS. 

Speech at the Republican" Convention" at Okrville, Ohio, 
Accepting a Renomination to Congress, August 26, 
1890. 

Mr. Chairman and Gentlemen of the Convention : I ac- 
cept the nomination tliat you have unanimously tendered me, and for 
that honor I beg you will receive my sincere thanks, my most grateful 
acknowledgments. I appreciate more than I can find words to express 
the cordial confidence shown by your action. Public station has its 
cares and its compensations, and one of the chief compensations is the 
approval of a just and intelligent constituency. Nothing so sustains 
the Representative ; nothing so gives him courage for the work before 
him. It inspires him to the highest efforts in the service of his coun- 
try ; it encourages him to the most faithful work of which he is ca- 
pable, that he may deserve the trust reposed in him. The relation 
becomes closer, and the ties stronger, between Congressman and con- 
stituent in the continued and unbroken association of years. I freely 
acknowledge my affection for the old district, which has honored me 
so long, and which in all weather and under all circumstances has 
given me faithful and unfaltering support. 

With the generous assurances I have received to-day, I turn to 
the new district and its faithful Republicans with hope and courage, 
and with a resolute purpose to join in bearing to the front the flag 
of our faith, and in resisting every assault upon the principles which 
are so essential to the Nation's growth and prosperity. It can not 
be said that the new district is altogether new. We are not total 
strangers, although the counties constituting the district are for the 
first time in the history of the State brought into Congressional 
relations. With one of the counties — that of Stark — I have been iden- 
tified in all the political changes of the last two decades, for even a 
Democratic Legislature has not yet been able to separate me from my 
home county, where all the years of my manhood have been spent, 
80 



460 SPEECHES AND ADDRESSES OF WILLIAM McKINLEY. 

and where most that is near and dear to me in memory and associa- 
tion is to be found. Nor are Wayne and Medina strangers to each 
other, or to me, in political association. Wayne has been twice in the 
district I have had the honor to represent — in 1878, and again in 
1884 ; in which latter year Medina was also associated in the same 
Congressional district. These were memorable years — each memora- 
ble in this, that a Democratic Legislature had carved out the district 
for a Democratic triumph, which, after one of the most notable local 
contests in the State, was happily and gloriously turned into a Repub- 
lican victory. Nor are we strangers to Holmes County. The little 
band of enthusiastic Republicans of that Democratic stronghold are 
known the State over as faithful and unwavering in their devotion 
to the Republican party and to Republican principles. 

Mr. Chairman, while this is a Republican Convention, through and 
through, it would not be true to say that it originated with the Re- 
publican party. The leaders of the Democratic party, by an act in 
which the rank and file had no part, made this convention necessary. 
A Democratic Legislature, without any demand from the great body 
of their constituency, in disregard of the rights of a majority of the 
voters of this State, and with the single purpose to increase unduly 
the political power of the Democratic party in the National House 
of Representatives, made this district and fourteen others to be 
surely Democratic, and to insure fifteen Democratic Representatives 
from this State in the Fifty-second Congress, out of tbe twenty-one 
to which Ohio is entitled. 't|| 

The Congressional district, therefore, in which we find ourselves 
is not of our own making nor of our own seeking. It was not 
made by our party friends, but by our party opponents in the Legis- 
lature ; made at the close of a decade, with the new census already 
taken and a new apportionment soon to be had ; out of time, against 
precedent, and against the wishes of many Democrats, that they 
might seize political control in a State where they are fairly in the 
minority, and thereby secure a party majority in the popular branch 
of Congress. This was the sole and unconcealed purpose of the 
Democratic gerrymander in Ohio — an example of base partisanship 
the like of which has no precedent in the State, and which deserves 
the condemnation of fair-minded men of all parties. 

Nothing remains for us but to meet them and join issue upon 
the field which they have chosen — chosen for partisan advantage — 
chosen with all the odds against us, with a majority of thousands 
in their favor. We can only meet them in fair and full debate, car- 



THE FIFTY-FIRST CONGRESS. 461 

rying our principles to the people, submitting tliem to their judg- 
ment, without passion or prejudice, and leaving the result with the 
people, before whose decree all parties and policies must yield. We 
must realize that the contest will be a hard one, probably tlie hardest 
we have ever had, and that without the most determined spirit, the 
most resolute purpose, the severest effort, moved by high considera- 
tions of duty and public policy, our efforts will be in vain. Moved 
by such sentiments, Ave can go to the people and rely upon that sense 
of fair play so characteristic of the American citizen to join in rebuk- 
ing the party leaders who have sought without justification or prece- 
dent to override the will of the majority in the State. 

The contest this year throughout the country is a National one. 
Elections will be held in every State of the Union — elections which 
will determine party supremacy in the House of Representatives from 
March 4, 1891, to March 4, 1893, up to and including the election 
and inauguration of a President to succeed General Harrison. The 
importance of these elections can not be overstated, and their very 
importance demands the fullest discussion and most enlightened 
judgment. Whether or not the House shall be Eepublican will 
depend, and should depend, upon how well the Republican party has 
administered its trust through the first session of the Fifty-first Con- 
gress, now drawing to a close ; and to that record I invite the most 
scrutinizing examination, and upon it am willing to base our claims 
for party supremacy in the National councils. 

The House organized in December last, and has been in continu- 
ous session for nine months. Its work thus far is made up, and must 
speak for itself. First of all, and essential to all, was the change of 
rules, which would enable the majority, chosen by the people, to con- 
duct the public business. The House has settled that, not only for 
the present but I believe for all time, by declaring that a quorum of 
Representatives in their seats, sworn to perform their public duties 
under the Constitution, drawing their salaries for the performance of 
such duties, can not by their silence stop the public business and 
interrupt the power of the majority to enact needed legislation ; and 
that their presence shall be noted and counted to make a constitu- 
tional quorum, if, sitting in their seats, in full view of their associates 
and the country, they shall refuse to vote. This common-sense rule 
has enabled the present House of Representatives to make great 
progress with the business of the country, and has given the fullest 
expression to the public will as represented by a majority on the 
floor ; for which rule the country is indebted largely to that able and 



462 SPEECHES AND ADDRESSES OP WILLIAM McKINLEY. 



courageous statesman from Maine, the Speaker of the House, the Hon. 
Thomas B. Keed. 

Nor can I recall any legislative body which has so thoroughly kept 
the pledges of the party electing it as tlie pa-esent majority in the 
House of Representatives. The Republicans entered upon the Presi- 
dential campaign of 1888 with a platform of principles and declara- 
tion of party purposes upon which, after the fullest discussion, the 
country called it back to power. The people responded to that plat- 
form and those pledges by electing a Republican President and a 
Republican House of Representatives, placing that party in full con- 
trol of the Government. From March 4, 1889, the Republican party 
has been charged with the administration of the Government, and is 
therefore responsible to the people for its character, and can not if it 
would, and would not if it could, escape accountability. 

The Executive department under the administration of President 
Harrison has been clean, conservative, patriotic, and able. He has 
met party expectations ; he has fulfilled party pledges ; he enjoys the 
confidence of the great party which elected him, of the business men 
of the country, and of the public generally. 

So far as the House of Representatives is concerned, the party 
pledges of 1888 are no longer professions, but a complete fulfill- 
ment ; no longer a promise, but a performance ; not a pledge but has 
been kept ; not a purpose but has been executed. We declared 
in that platform, " the supreme and sovereign right of every law- 
ful citizen, rich or poor, native or foreign-born, white or black, to 
cast one free ballot in public elections and have that ballot duly 
counted " ; and we demanded " effective legislation to secure the in- 
tegrity and purity of elections, which are the fountains of all public 
authority." 

The House, weeks ago, passed an Election Bill giving force and 
efficiency to that pledge, which bill is now pending in the Senate of 
the United States. To cast upon it prejudice and opprobrium, to 
give it a character which does not belong to it, it is designated by 
our political opponents as a Force Bill. It is wrongly named ; that 
is a misnomer, and a willful one. It is, in fact, an Anti-Force Bill. 
It is a bill to prevent force from seizing our elections and overriding 
a constitutional majority. It is a bill to protect the ballot box from 
the fraud and the force of an illegal and unscrupulous minority. It 
is called a harsh measure. It will rest lightly upon every honest 
voter who is willing to accord to every other honest voter the same 
right that he enjoys. If it is harsh, it is only harsh upon law- 



THE FIFTY-FIRST CONGRESS. 463 

breakers ; if severe, it is only severe upon the nullifier of tlie Consti- 
tution, the stuffer of ballot boxes, and he who would " doctor returns" 
to reverse the will of the people. It will never be needed and never 
be enforced if every section of this country will protect the citizen in 
the fullest enjoyment of the constitutional right of suffrage. Where 
that is denied or withheld, whether by fraud or by violence, the Elec- 
tion Bill which the House of Eepresentatives passed at this session of 
Congress steps in and protects the legal voter, and counts the legal 
vote. "When that great constitutional right is denied or suppressed, 
in any part of the Union, the whole power of the Federal Govern- 
ment will be at hand to punish those who would poison the springs 
of political authority, to give force to the Constitution, and to pre- 
serve the sanctity of our citizenship. 

Another purpose we declared in Chicago, another pledge we made 
to the people, was to revise the tariff on the lines of protection. 
How ? " By such revision as will tend to check imports of such arti- 
cles as are produced by our people, the production of which gives 
employment to our labor ; and to release from import duty those 
articles of foreign production (except luxuries) the like of which can 
not be produced at home." The Kepublican party, unlike the Demo- 
cratic party, has always lowered duties when that was in the interest 
of the people ; and it has had the courage to raise them when to do 
so was to inaugurate and promote great industries and enlarge the 
field of employment for American men and women. If any doubt 
ever existed that the House Tariff Bill was a piece of American legis- 
lation for the benefit of the American people and in the line of the 
country's largest prosperity, that doubt has long since been removed 
by the manifestations of opposition which have come from the lead- 
ing and competing nations of the world. We said in our platform of 
1888 : " We are uncompromisingly in favor of the American system 
of protection. We protest against its destruction as proposed by 
President Cleveland and his party. They serve the interests of 
Europe ; we will support the interests of America." We have given 
legislative sanction to this declaration in the bill that has passed the 
House with a fidelity of purpose which even our enemies will not 
question. The public meetings that have been held in England, and 
the exhibitions of temper which have been witnessed in some of the 
great manufacturing centers of England, and in the parliamentary 
bodies of other nations, protesting against our proposed tariff law, 
must have convinced the most doubting that our foreign rivals regard 
the bill not in the interest of Europe, but in the interest of America. 



464 SPEECHES AND ADDRESSES OF WILLIAM McKINLEY. 

They see nothing in it but a loss of their American trade and a cor- 
responding gain to our own producers. 

Of course, it does not please other nations. It was not framed after 
that fashion. The Mills Bill did. President Cleveland's free-trade 
message received only acclamations of praise from the nations of the 
world ; our bill receives only condemnation and bitter denunciation ; 
that is the precise difference. The bill now pending in the Senate 
was not made to please other nations. It was framed for the people 
of the United States as a defense to their industries, as a protection 
to the labor of their hands, as a safeguard to the happy homes of 
American workmen, and as a security to their education, their wages, 
and their investments. If it shall be enacted into law, I but assert a 
fact, which will be fully verified, and that thoughtful men every- 
where will confirm, when I declare that it will bring to this country 
a prosperity unparalleled in our own history and unrivaled in the 
history of the world. And let me assure you that the bill will become 
a law. A Eepublican Senate will pass it, a Eepublican President will 
put upon it his seal of approval as soon as it shall reach him, and 
another great pledge of the Eepublican party will be kept and ful- 
filled. 

The Fifty-first Congress has passed (and it is now a law) what 
is known as the " Customs Administrative Bill," a part of the great 
tariff system of the country. This is a bill to protect the hon- 
est importer in the United States against the unscrupulous and dis- 
honest importer ; to protect our own producers and citizens from 
the undervaluations that have been too common ; and, it is hoped, to 
take the great business of importing into this country out of the 
hands of dishonest men, and place it, as it once was, in the hands of 
honest merchants. It looks also to the protection of the revenues of 
the country ; for it is a notorious fact that for twenty-five years past, 
by a system of consignments and undervaluations, and the establish- 
ment of foreign agencies on this side, we have not collected by from 
twenty-five to fifty per cent of the proper duty on the true valuation 
of the merchandise imported. 

The House of Eepresentatives has passed a " Bankruptcy Bill," 
demanded by Boards of Trade and Chambers of Commerce and other 
commercial bodies, and by the business interests of every section of 
the country. It will give relief to honest men who have been unfor- 
tunate enough to fail in business through no fault of their own, and 
afford them an opportunity to recover their lost ground and com- 
mence life anew, unburdened with debt and unharassed by judgments 



THE FIFTY-FIRST CONGRESS. 455 

and executions. It has passed a bill creating a Circuit Court, which 
will relieve the overburdened docket of the Supreme Court of the 
United States. It will give to suitors and litigants an opportunity 
to have their causes tried within a lifetime. It has passed a bill, and 
the same has been approved by the President, known as the " Original 
Pack&ge Law." This gives to each State the right to control and 
regulate the liquor traffic within its own borders. 

The House has also passed what is known as the " Anti-Lottery 
Bill." This will be speedily passed by the Senate and signed by the 
President, and it is believed that it will give a death-blow to the 
vicious system of gambling which has been so prevalent for years in 
some of the States ; that system which has robbed the poor of untold 
millions, and enriched the lottery corporations of Louisiana and other 
States — corporations that have grown so rich that they dominated 
State governments, controlled Legislatures, stifled the press, and de- 
bauched public and private morals in the most shocking manner. 

This Congress has passed the bill, after years' delay, giving to the 
Agricultural Colleges of the several States a proper and generous an- 
nual appropriation for the better education of the people in agricul- 
ture and mechanics. Under this law, which President Harrison 
cheerfully approved, Ohio will receive annually a handsome contribu- 
tion to aid its excellent Agricultural College of the State University. 

The Fifty-first Congress has also passed the " Meat Inspection 
Bill." This is a measure of great protection to the farmers, breeders, 
and packers of the country, and will insure a larger exportation to 
foreign countries of American pork and beef, which has been dis- 
criminated against for years to the great injury and loss of our 
farmers. 

The House has passed the " Compound Lard Bill," which, like 
the " Oleomargarine Law," requires that lard shall be branded for 
what it really is. If it is pure lard, it shall be so marked ; if it is 
made of cotton-seed oil, or any other foreign substance, it shall be so 
designated, that the buyer may not be deceived and the consumer 
cheated. We must have honest trading and pure food. 

The " Anti-Option Bill," to stop gambling in stocks, buying "fu- 
tures," and controlling the agricultural crops of the United States 
on paper, is now being considered, and, I believe, will receive the ap- 
proval of the House. If it does not, it will be no fault of the great 
majority of the Republican members. 

This Congress has also passed the " Anti-Trust Bill," by Senator 
Sherman— the first bill of the kind known in our National legislation 



466 SPEECHES AND ADDRESSES OP WILLIAM McKINLEY. 

— a bill which strikes at trusts, or unlawful combinations of capital to 
raise prices according to their own sweet will, and extort undue prof- 
its from the mass of the people. This is in response to our National 
platform of 1888, in which we declared " opposition to all combina- 
tions of capital organized in trusts to control arbitrarily the condition 
of trade among our citizens." 

We pledged in our platform of 1888 that the bills then pending in 
the Eepublican Senate to enable the people of Washington, North 
and South Dakota, and Montana to form Constitutions and establish 
State governments " should be passed without unnecessary delay." 
This pledge was kept, through Eepublican votes, in the closing hours 
of the last session of the Fiftieth Congress. We pledged ourselves 
" to aid in the admission of other Territories," and in answer to that 
pledge the present Congress has admitted Idaho and Wyoming into 
the sisterhood of States, adding two new members to the Union and 
two stars to the National flag. 

On the subject of " the forfeiture of unearned public lands," here- 
tofore given to railroads, the Eepublican party made a distinct pledge. 
It was that these lands should be restored for homesteads to American 
citizens and actual settlers. In furtherance of that pledge the House 
has at this session forfeited over 8,000,000 acres, equal to about one 
third of the area of Ohio, and will, before the session is closed, place 
that vast acreage within the reach and enjoyment of our own citizens 
for homestead purposes. 

We made another solemn pledge in that platform. We declared 
that we would do full justice to the soldiers and sailors of the Union ; 
that we would bind up their wounds ; that we would care for their 
widows and orphans. That pledge, too, has been fulfilled, not by the 
House alone, but by the Senate and President ; and the " Disability 
Bill," which is the most liberal pension measure ever passed by a 
legislative body, is now a law. Under its just and generous provi- 
sions, thousands of disabled soldiers, their widows and children, will 
be deservedly placed upon the pension rolls of the United States 
Government. The promise of Lincoln will never be forgotten or 
broken so long as the Eepublican party holds the reins of power. 

Nor has the House forgotten the rights of Eepublican Eepresenta- 
tives in the South, although cheated out of the certificates of election 
that were given to their Democratic opponents. The Eepiiblican 
House has given the seats to those who were fairly elected, and thus 
vindicated the majesty of the majority, the sovereignty of the Con- 
stitution, and the sanctity of law. It has boldly and rightfully put its 



THE FIFTY-FIRST CONGRESS. 467 

condemnation upon the practice altogether too prevalent in the 
South of tampering with jjopular elections, of poisoning the foun- 
tains of political power. 

"We made another pledge — " that the Kepublican party is in favor 
of the use of both gold and silver as money " ; that the one should not 
be discriminated against in favor of the other, but that both should 
be equally and alike recognized as standards of value by the Govern- 
ment. This pledge also has been kept. 

The financial department of the Government has been managed 
prudently and ably by that distinguished financier, Secretary Win- 
dom. The large sum of money that was deposited by the Cleveland 
administration with favored banks is being rapidly withdrawn, and 
used for the payment of the debts of the Government as speedily as 
it can safely be done. Since the advent into power of the Harrison 
administration the average purchase of bonds has been $8,206,000 
monthly, while during the preceding administration no bonds of the 
Government were bought from March 4, 1885, to August 3, 1887. 
The debt has been reduced $150,000,000 under the present administra- 
tion. The interest-bearing debt of the Government to-day is a little 
less than $700,000,000, while three years ago it was $988,000,000. 
The Government finds the greatest difficulty in getting its own bonds. 
The credit of the Government is so high, and this class of securities 
so safe, that investors are slow to part with their bonds, and it has 
become a serious problem how to get them, even with the Govern- 
ment having the money on hand constantly in the Treasury to pay 
for them. This is in great contrast with the condition of the Treas- 
ury when the Eepublicans took control of the Government in 1861. 
Then we could not get anybody to take our bonds at any price ; now 
we can not get the people holding them to give them up without a 
large premium. Then we relied upon loans to meet current ex- 
penses ; now we have a large surplus above our current needs, and 
instead of loaning it without interest to the banks, as was the custom 
of the last administration, we are striving to apply it to the extin- 
guishment of the National debt. 

Mr. President, this briefly is the work of the Executive and of 
Congress, especially the House of Eepresentatives, since the last 
National election. I may be pardoned if I ask our political oj)po- 
nents to match it with the achievements of any of its predecessors in 
the last twenty-five years. Time will not permit me to make com- 
parisons; you can make them. It is on this record that I invite 
your judgment ; it is upon this record that the people of the country 



468 SPEECHES AND ADDRESSES OF WILLIAM McKINLEY. 

must determine whether the party making it deserves and shall re- 
ceive a continuance of their confidence. 

The Kepublican House found two great industries in the United 
States prostrated by a decision of the courts growing out of an error 
in the tariff law of 1883. These were the manufactures of silk and 
worsted goods. They had appealed to a Democratic House over and 
over again without heed or relief. Their spindles had been stopped, 
and in the case of worsted goods the injury not only applied to the 
manufacturers and their workmen, but to the wool growers of the 
entire country. Worsted goods wrought from foreign wools were 
driving from our market woolen goods made from American wool. 
The wool-growing industry was suffering as well as manufacturing 
and transportation interests. The House responded to the appeal of 
these suffering industries and passed a joint resolution which received 
the approval of the Senate, and of the President, giving immediate 
relief. 

This is but one example of a number that I might mention 
showing the alacrity with which the House has responded to every 
appeal from the people. It has devoted its time and attention more 
closely to the public business than any other Congress of which I 
have had the honor to be a member or of which I have any knowl- 
edge. Whatever may be the verdict of the people at the polls in 
November, the future can be safely relied upon to give to the Fifty- 
first Congress its meed of praise, and I have no doubt but that it will 
stand well in comparison with any predecessor in the history of the 
Kepublic, under the rule of the Republican or any other party. 



THE EIGHT-HOUR LAW. 

Speech in the House of Eepkesentatives, Fifty-first 
Congress, August 28, 1890. 

[From the Congressional Becord.] 

The House having under consideration the bill (H. R. 9791) constituting 
eight hours a day's work for all laborers, workmen, and mechanics employed by 
the Government, Mr. McKixley said — 

Mr. Speaker : I am in favor of this bill. It has been said that 
it is a bill to limit the opportunity of the workingman to gain a live- 
lihood. This is not true ; it will have the opiDosite effect. So far as 
the Government of the United States as an employer is concerned, 
in the limitation for a day's work provided in this bill to eight hours, 
instead of putting any limitation upon the opportunity of the Ameri- 
can freeman to earn a living, it increases and enlarges his opportu- 
nity. [Applause.] Eight hours under the laws of the United States 
constitute a day's work. That law has been on our statute-books for 
twenty or more years. 

Several Members. Since 1868. 

They say around me that it has been on our statute-books for 
twenty-two years. In all these years it has been " the word of prom- 
ise to the ear," but by the Government of the United States it has 
been "broken to the hope." [Applause.] The Government and its 
officials should be swift to execute and enforce its own laws ; failure 
in this particular is most reprehensible. Now, it must be remem- 
bered that when we constitute eight hours a day's work, instead of 
ten hours, every four days give an additional day's work to some 
workingman who may not have any employment at all. [Applause.] 
It is one more day's work, one more day's wages, one more oppor- 
tunity for work and Avages, an increased demand for labor. I am in 
favor of this bill as it is amended by the motion of the gentleman 
from Maryland [Mr. McComas]. It applies now only to the labor 



m 



470 SPEECHES AND ADDKESSES OP WILLIAM McKINLEY. 

of men's hands. It ajaplies only to their work. It does not apply to 
material, it does not apply to transportation. It only applies to the 
actual labor, skilled or unskilled, employed on public works and in 
the execution of the contracts of the Government. And the Govern- 
ment of the United States ought, finally and in good faith, to set this 
example of eight hours as constituting a day's work required of labor- 
ing men in the service of the United States. [Applause.] The 
tendency of the times the world over is for shorter hours for labor, 
shorter hours in the interest of health, shorter hours in the interest of 
humanity, shorter hours in the interest of the home and the family ; 
and the United States can do no better service to labor and to its own 
citizens than to set the example to States, to corporations, and to in- 
dividuals employing men by declaring that, so far as the Government 
is concerned, eight hours shall constitute a day's work, and be all that 
is required of its laboring force. [Applause.] 

Therefore, Mr, Speaker, this bill should be passed. My colleague, 
Mr. Morey, has stated what we owe the family in this connection, 
and Cardinal Manning, in a recent article, spoke noble words on the 
general subject when he said : 

But if the domestic life of the people be vital above all ; if the peace, the 
purity of homes, the education of children, the duties of wives and mothers, the 
duties of husbands and of fathers, be written in the natural law of mankind, and 
if these things are sacred, far beyond anything that can be sold in the market, 
then I say, if the hours of labor resulting from the unregulated sale of a man's 
strength and skill shall lead to the destruction of domestic life, to the neglect of 
children, to turning wives and mothers into living machines, and of fathers and 
husbands into — what shall I say, creatures of burden ? — I will not say any other 
word — who rise up before the sun, and come back when it is set, wearied and able 
only to take food and lie down to rest, the domestic life of men exists no longer, 
and we dare not go on in this path. 

Mr. Speaker, we owe something to the care, the elevation, the dig- 
nity, and the education of labor. We owe something to the working- 
men and the families of the workingmen throughout the United States 
who constitute the large body of our population, and this bill is a 
step in the right direction. [Applause.] 



THE CONFERENCE COMMITTEE'S EEPOET. 

Speech in the House of Representatives, Fifty-fiest 
Congress, September 27, 1890. 

[From the Congressional Record.] 

In submitting the report of the Committee on Conference on matters of dif- 
ference between the two Houses on the bill (H. R. 9,416) to reduce the revenue 
and equalize duties on imports, and for other purposes, Mr. McKinley said — 

Mr. Speaker : An agreement has been reached by the Committee 
of Conference after ten days' most careful and patient consideration. 
The bill which the House of Eepresentatives jjassed last May, con- 
taining nearly 4,000 items, was amended by the Senate in 445 partic- 
ulars. More than 100 of these amendments were purely verbal — a 
change of the number of a section or the transposition of a paragraph 
or a word. A number of the amendments were serious and substan- 
tial, showing a wide and what seemed to be an almost irreconcilable 
difference. By far the larger number of amendments, however, were 
so slight and unimportant that an agreement was quickly reached. 
In the first schedule, that of chemicals, the differences were unimpor- 
tant, and in most instances the House receded from its provisions in- 
cluded in that schedule and accepted the Senate rates. Sulphuric 
acid for agricultural purposes, which had been put upon the dutiable 
list by the House, has been transferred to the free list by the con- 
ferees as provided in the Senate amendments. The next schedule is 
that of earthenware and glassware. The rates passed by the House , 
were retained by the conferees, so that the duty on decorated pottery ' 
and decorated china will be 60 per cent, and upon plain earthen- 
ware 55 per cent. This will encourage that industry to a higher 
development, and eventually give the home producers a larger share 
of the home market than they now enjoy, as well as secure the benefit 
of lower prices to the consumer. In the glassware schedule slight 
reductions were made from the rates fixed by the House, which are 



472 SPEECHES AND ADDRESSES OP WILLIAM McKINLEY. 

much in advance of those fixed by the Senate ; they are believed to 
be such as will in no way interfere with this great and valuable in- 
dustry, and will be found a vast improvement over present rates and 
classifications. 

The metal schedule, which occupies twenty-five pages of the bill, 
has received earnest consideration, because of the importance of the 
great industries it represents. All shades of opinion relating to its 
details have been carefully considered, and every effort has been made 
to reconcile the claims of conflicting interests and the conflicting 
claims of various sections of our country. No tariff bill was ever 
framed that was not largely made up by compromises, and the present 
metal schedule is an illustration of this truth. It is confidently be- 
lieved that upon examination it will be found to be fully protective 
of every branch of our iron and steel industries. There may be dis- 
appointment over some of the rates that have been adopted, but the 
sober second thought will be one of satisfaction that so much has 
been done that is good, and so little that is likely to produce even tem- 
porary inconvenience. Nothing has been done that can result in loss 
of business or prestige, and nothing that can call for a reduction of 
wages or a diminution of the number of workingmen employed. On 
the contrary, there is every reason to believe, and I do believe, that 
the new metal schedule will largely increase the demand for all our 
iron and steel products, and that consequently it will largely increase 
the demand for labor, and especially for highly skilled labor. I be- 
lieve further that the metal schedule which is now submitted is the 
most harmonious and the most surely protective of any metal sched- 
ule of this generation. 

Looking at the details of this schedule as it has finally been 
adopted, and without confining our attention exclusively to the 
amendments proposed by the Senate, it will be found that we have 
retained iron ore and pig iron, also scrap iron and scrap steel, all of 
which are sometimes erroneously called raw materials, at the same 
rates which are found in the present tariff. To have reduced the 
duties on iron ore and pig iron would have encouraged the importa- 
tion of foreign ore and foreign pig iron, for which there would have 
been no excuse, as we need to encourage the development of new iron- 
ore fields, and can now produce and are producing all the pig iron 
we need, except a small quantity of spiegeleisen, and our production 
of this kind of pig iron is constantly increasing. If we had reduced 
the duty on scrap iron and scrap steel we would have interfered with 
the prosperity of our pig iron industry, scrap iron and scrap steel be- 



TUE CONFERENCE COMMITTEE'S REPORT, 473 

ing substitutes for pig iron. The duties on the various forms of bar 
iron, which is the product almost exclusively of hand labor, and not 
of the labor-saving machinery which has worked such wonderful rev- 
olutions in other branches of the world's iron and steel industries, 
have been retained substantially as they are in the present tariff. 
Such slight reductions as have been made will not in the least en- 
courage the importation of foreign bar iron. 

The duty on all forms of structural iron and steel has been re- 
duced from ^28 per ton to nine tenths of one cent per pound, or 
$20.16 per ton. This is the rate which was embodied in the House 
bill ; and while it is nearly $8 per ton less than the rate in the present 
law, it is $2.24 per ton higher than the rate proposed by the Senate, 
which reduction we were convinced was too sweeping. The rate 
which we have adopted will sufficiently protect our manufacturers of 
structural iron and steel. The production of these articles has be- 
come a great National industry, consuming annually large quantities 
of iron ore and pig iron and employing directly many workingmen. 
This industry has been built up under the present protective duty, 
but it is no longer necessary that the whole of this duty should be 
retained. 

The paragraph relating to boiler or other plate iron or steel has 
been changed by the Conference Committee by adopting a new clas- 
sification for all iron and steel plates valued at two cents per pound 
or less. All plates valued at one cent per pound or less, and thicker 
than No. 10 wire gauge, are to be subject to a duty of five tenths of 
one cent per pound ; valued above one cent and not above 1.4 cents, 
the duty is to be sixty-five one hundredths of one cent per pound ; 
valued above 1.4 cents and not above two cents the duty is to be eight 
tenths of one cent per pound. These are reductions on a uniform 
rate of one cent per pound which was embodied in the House bill, 
which rate we are convinced was too high upon the lower grades of 
plates. On all plates valued above two cents per pound the House 
rates have been retained. The new rates taken as a whole will afford 
much surer protection to our manufacturers of steel plates than the 
present duty of 45 per cent. The duty on forgings of iron or steel 
has been reduced from the present rate two tenths of one cent per 
pound, but a proviso has been added that no forgings shall pay a 
lower rate of duty than 45 per cent. 

In the paragraph relating to hoop iron we have included a proviso 
covering hoops for barrels and hoops and ties for baling purposes, 
which will encourage the home production of these articles and 



474: SPEECHES AND ADDRESSES OP WILLIAM McKINLEY. 

check importations which have in recent years been so great as to 
seriously injure a "worthy domestic industry, one which could not 
compete under a low duty with the cheap labor of women and chil- 
dren across the Atlantic. This proviso has been inserted partly in 
the hope that the South will now make at least a large part of its 
own cotton ties, for the production of which it has abundant natural 
resources. 

The duty on rails has been made to apply uniformly to all sizes 
and shapes of iron and steel rails. The rate adopted is $13.44 per 
ton, which is a reduction on light rails of 17 per ton, and on those 
of ordinary use of S3. 56 per ton. This reduction will not, however, 
impair the effectiveness for protection of the duty which is retained. 
Originally the duty on steel rails of standard sizes was 838 per ton ; 
but when the tariff of 1883 was framed this duty was reduced to $17 
per ton, the higher duty having accomplished the work for which it 
was designed — the building up of a great steel-rail industry, the first 
in the world. It has now been thought safe to still further reduce 
the duty on steel rails, in obedience to a wise policy which will not 
impose any higher duty than is needed to prevent injurious foreign 
competition. With the march of invention and the increase of skill 
in the production of domestic steel rails it has been possible to reduce 
their cost since the passage of the tariff of 1883, although their manu- 
facture is still burdened with heavy freight charges on the materials 
from which they are made, and on the rails themselves when shipped 
to points where they meet the competition of foreign rails which can 
be cheaply transported by ocean vessels. A lower rate of duty on 
steel rails than is now proposed would not encourage the erection of 
additional rail mills, which it is believed the proposed duty will do. 
The hope is indulged that at least we may soon see steel rails made 
on the shores of Lake Superior and on the Pacific coast. The duty 
on steel sheets has been made specific, instead of ad valorem, as in the 
present tariff. The new duty will be found to be more protective than 
the present duty, under which the importations of steel sheets have 
been very heavy. The duty on galvanized iron and steel sheets has 
been retained as it reads in the present tariff. 

One of the best features of the metal schedule is the new rate 
which has been imposed on tin plates. The present duty of one 
cent per pound has been found to be a revenue duty only, no tin- 
plate industry existing in our country to-day. The new rate of 2.2 
cents per pound is absolutely necessary if we would have a tin-plate 
industry of our own ; and that we should have such an industry will 



THE CONFERENCE COMMITTEE'S REPORT. 475 

not be denied when the large sums of money we annually send 
abroad for tin plates, and which might be kept in circulation among 
our own people, are considered. We can make our own tin plates if 
given a chance. The new duty will not materially advance the cost 
of tin plates to consumers after we make a beginning in their manu- 
facture, while it is entirely certain that the quality of all the tin 
plates used by our own people will be improved when foreign and 
domestic competitors meet in our markets. The new duty is not to 
go into effect until July 1, 1891, and it is provided that if the tin- 
plate industry shall not be established in this country by 1897, tin 
plates shall then go on the free list. On taggers iron an adequately 
protective duty is also provided, which the present tariff does not 
contain. 

That feature of the bill which will provoke criticism — and it is 
the only one which will do so— is the paragraph relating to steel 
ingots, blooms, slabs, billets, etc. The rates agreed upon are lower 
than the rates provided in the House bill, and for which the House 
conferees earnestly insisted. Various propositions of compromise 
were submitted, but all were rejected by a majority of the Senate 
conferees. Unsatisfactory as the new rates are to the House con- 
ferees and to the manufacturers, they will nevertheless in the main 
afford better protection to these manufacturers than the present very 
unsatisfactory and injurious duty of 45 per cent, the new rates being 
specific throughout. Improved processes now everywhere employed 
in the manufacture of steel billets, slabs, etc., will, it is hoped, en- 
able our manufacturers to compete successfully with foreign makers 
in our own markets. 

The duty on wire rods has been left as it is in the present law, 
with the exception that it is made to cover smaller sizes than are 
now specifically provided for. The duties on wire have also been 
retained substantially as they read in the present law. 

The duty on anvils has been slightly increased, to enable our peo- 
ple to make their own anvils, which are now largely imported. The 
duty on anchors has been slightly reduced. The duty on axles has 
been reduced half a cent per pound. Many other reductions have 
been made in minor iron and steel products when this could be done 
without injury to home industries. The duties on cutlery have been 
increased to meet the continually increasing undervaluations and 
other frauds of foreign manufacturers. The duty on nickel has been 
reduced, and nickel ore and nickel matte have been placed on the 
free list, because after a long period of protection it has been found 
31 



476 SPEECHES AND ADDRESSES OF WILLIAM McKINLEY. 

that we need to go abroad for a large part of our supply of this use- 
ful metal. Aluminum, a new metal, is provided for at rates which 
it is believed will afford ample protection to those who may engage in 
its manufacture. The duties on copper are reduced, while those on 
lead and zinc are retained as in the present law with slight change. 
It is not necessary to examine the metal schedule further. It will 
be found, on full examination, to embody features of great value to 
our iron and steel manufacturers, while carefully respecting the in- 
terests of consumers. 

In the wood schedule the Senate rates were lower than the House 
rates on all kinds of lumber. The House conferees consented to a 
reduction of from S2 to 81 per thousand on white-pine boards, and a 
proportionate reduction on white-pine clapboards and shingles ; also 
to a duty of 20 per cent on telegraph and telephone poles and rail- 
road ties. 

The woolen schedule as it left the House was amended in only 
two or three particulars by the Senate, and these two or three particu- 
lars were necessary to make the bill in all its provisions logical. It 
will be remembered that we lost in the House two amendments that 
were offered by the Committee on Ways and Means as to worsted 
yarns and worsted cloths. They were lost by a very small vote ; 
that side of the House voting solidly against the amendments, with 
a few on this side, gave, when the House was not full, a majority 
against the Committee amendments. As I stated then, the rates 
proposed by the Committee were necessary, and the Senate, when 
the bill passed to its consideration, immediately accepted those rates. 
With these exceptions the wool and woolen schedules are precisely as 
they passed the House of Representatives. I beg to say, in passing, 
that the rates given upon wool and woolens are assuredly protective. 
They correct the wrong against these industries inadvertently com- 
mitted in the tariff of 1883. They will help every farmer of the 
country who owns sheep, and will enable the manufacturers of woolen 
goods to better compete with their foreign rivals. This schedule has 
the hearty approval of the National Wool Growers' Association and 
of the several State Associations throughout the country. That is 
entirely true also of the tobacco schedule. In the cotton schedule 
there were some few changes, none of them, however, very important. 
They will be noticed by gentlemen who have the bill before them. 
With these exceptions the rates which passed the House have been 
maintained by the conferees, and are so reported. As to agricul- 
tural products, to which the Committeo on AYays and Means and this 



THE CONFERENCE COMMITTEE'S REPORT. 477 

House gave very careful attention, this bill has given to agriculture 
for the first time distinctively a place in the tariff. All the rates, I 
believe, with one single exception, that were fixed by the House were 
either adopted by the Senate, or, if not adopted by the Senate, the 
Senate conferees yielded to the House rates. The duties on agri- 
cultural products have been increased, and the same meed of pro- 
tection has been afforded the farm as the factory. These rates were 
fixed after the fullest consultation with the representatives of the 
farming interests of the country, whose voice almost for the first 
time in the history of tariff legislation has been heard and heeded 
in the House of Representatives. 

On manufactures of flax there was a very wide difference between 
the Senate and the House. The House, as gentlemen will remem- 
ber, increased the duties upon flax and flax products to the end that 
we might inaugurate and establish a great industry in this country 
which would use our own fibers as well as foreign fibers, and we made 
the duties high enough, as we believed, to protect our people while 
they were engaged in establishing that industry. The Senate cut 
down the House rates in every particular, from the raw material up 
to the finished product. In conference a compromise agreement was 
reached very considerably above the Senate rates, although somewhat 
below the House rates, but sufficient, it is believed by the Committee 
of Conference, to enable our people at an early day to successfully 
and profitably manufacture all the coarser articles of flax that are so 
largely consumed in this country, and at no distant day manufacture 
the finer ones, which are now exclusively imported. This industry 
will require larger capital, and when established will furnish a larger 
demand for skilled and unskilled labor. 

On silk, which is the next schedule, the rates of duty were made 
specific in the House bill, about equivalent to the ad valorem rate 
under existing law. The Senate struck out the provision fixing 
specific rates and substituted the old rate of 50 per cent. To that 
amendment the House conferees yielded concurrence. 

The paper schedule is the next in order, and it is practically the 
same as passed by the House. Not a single important change, I 
believe, was made in that schedule except that we dissented from 
the provision of the Senate bill, and gave to albumenized and sensi- 
tized paper a duty of 35 per cent, and also laid a duty on tissue 
paper. 

On the sugar schedule, which is the one over which there was the 
most serious contention, the conferees, after a long struggle, finally 



478 SPEECHES AND ADDRESSES OF WILLIAM McKINLEY. 

reached an agreement. The House bill provided that all sugars up 
to and including No. 16 Dutch standard in color should be admitted 
free of duty, and provided also that all sugars above No. 16 should 
pay a duty of four tenths of 1 cent per pound. That was to compen- 
sate for the difference in the labor cost of refining in this country 
and the labor cost of refining in competing countries. It was in that 
shape that our bill went to the Senate. The Senate struck out No. 16 
as the line of free sugar and inserted No. 13. The difference between 
these two sugars — No. 16 Dutch standard and No. 13 — is easily dis- 
tinguished. The former is a yellow sugar fit for use, and the latter 
wholly without any domestic use. The Senate made No. 13 free, 
and provided that sugar above No. 13 up to No. 16 should be duti- 
able at three tenths of a cent per pound, and all above No. 16 at 
six tenths of a cent per pound. The first great struggle was over 
this dividing line ; the Senate insisting that free sugar should be 
limited to No. 13, a sugar which could not be used for domestic 
purposes, and which is eo impure that it never would go into any- 
body's family. The House, on the other hand, insisted that sugar 
should be free up to No. 16 Dutch standard, which is the sugar that 
we used in our boyhood, and which, in case of excessive prices for 
refined sugar, would serve as a regulator to keep down the price, and 
if necessary be freely used for domestic purposes. It was on this 
line that the greatest controversy arose. Finally, the Senate con- 
ferees yielded, and agreed that sugar up to and including No. 16 
Dutch standard should be free. As I have already said, the House 
rate of duty upon sugar above No. 16 was four tenths of a cent per 
pound. The Senate rate was six tenths of a cent per pound, and we 
finally made a compromise rate, fixing it at five tenths of a cent per 
pound upon all sugars above No. 16, and an additional rate of one 
tenth of a cent per pound upon all sugars coming from countries 
where an export bounty is paid to the domestic producer. That 
is the agreement that was finally reached between the conferees of 
the House and the conferees of the Senate on sugar. I beg to 
call the attention of the House for a moment to the present law in 
relation to sugar. All sugar not above No. 13 Dutch standard, test- 
ing by the polariscope not above 75 degrees, pays a duty of 1.4 cents 
per pound under existing law. In the bill which passed the House 
of Eepresentatives of the Fiftieth Congress, commonly known as 
the " Mills Bill," the duty upon all sugar not above No. 13 Dutch 
standard was fixed at 1.15 cents per pound. The duty under ex- 
isting law upon all sugars above No. 13 and not above No. 16 Dutch 



THE CONFERENCE COMMITTEE'S REPORT. 479 

standard in color is 2f cents per pound. In the Mills Bill it was 
made 2.2 cents per pound. All sugar above No. 16 and not above 
No. 20 Dutch standard in color is dutiable under existing law at 3 
cents per pound. Under the Mills Bill it was dutiable at 2.4 cents 
per pound. All sugar above No. 20 Dutch standard is dutiable 
under existing law at 3.5 cents per pound, and under the Mills 
Bill it was dutiable at 2.8 cents per pound. So it will be observed 
that up to and including No. 16 Dutch standard the report of the 
Committee makes sugar absolutely free, and above that grade the 
conferees report a duty of five tenths of a cent per pound, and one 
tenth additional upon sugars of that grade from countries paying an 
export bounty. It is proper I should state as to countries paying 
an export bounty, that only 16 per cent of that kind of sugar was 
imported last year. This leaves all the sugar of Great Britain and 
the British possessions, all the sugar of Cuba, above 16 Dutch stand- 
ard, dutiable at five tenths of a cent per pound. The sugars of 
France and Germany, Austria-Hungary, and Belgium would pay 
the additional one tenth. It is believed that the burden put upon 
bounty-paid sugar imported here will influence the countries paying 
it to remove the export bounty, to the end that they may on equal 
terms compete with all other countries for this market. 

Upon the subject of art, the House placed paintings and statuary 
upon the free list. The Senate restored the old duty of 30 per cent, 
and the conferees of the House and Senate have made art produc- 
tions dutiable at 15 per cent. 

One of the points of controversy between the House and the 
Senate was with reference to the article of binding-twine. The pres- 
ent duty upon binding-twine is 2^ cents per pound ; the House bill 
made it 1^ cents a pound. The Finance Committee of the Senate 
raised our duty from 1^ to 1^ cents a pound, and thus reported the 
bill to the Senate. The Senate, after debate, put binding-twine upon 
the free list. Therefore, when we met in conference, the Senate 
conferees insisted upon binding-twine being free, and the House 
conferees insisted upon the rate fixed by the House, a cent and a 
quarter a pound. After very long, patient, and full consideration of 
the whole subject, the conferees finally agreed to fix the duty at seven 
tenths of a cent a pound. I will state in this connection that the 
Mills Bill made twine dutiable at 15 per cent ad valorem, equiva- 
lent to 1^ or If cents per pound. 

We concurred in the adoption of the provision as to reciprocity, 
passed by the Senate, known as the " Aldrich amendment," which em- 



480 SPEECHES AND ADDRESSES OP WILLIAM McKINLEY. 

powers the President, in the event that equal and reciprocal advantages 
are not accorded to us by those countries producing sugar and coffee 
and hides, to proclaim the fact, and it is made his duty to do so, in 
which event the duties proposed in the bill as to these several articles 
are to be the duties thereafter to be collected against such countries. 
That is to say, coffee and hides have been on the free list by our laws 
for many years, and now it is proposed to make sugar free, in the inter- 
est of our people and by way of encouraging reciprocal trade relations 
on the part of the countries producing these articles. If these coun- 
tries give nothing in return for this, then the President shall proclaim 
the fact, and upon such proclamation the duties herein provided for 
sugar, coffee, and hides will be put in operation. We show by this 
bill our disposition to admit sugar free into the United States. We 
have already shown, by the legislation of the past, our disposition to 
admit coffee and hides free, from which, so far as reciprocal advan- 
tages are concerned, there has been no equality. This provision is 
added to the bill in the expectation that it will induce sugar-growing 
and coffee-producing countries, in return for this concession, to 
admit our agricultural products free. It is believed by distinguished 
leaders of our party, to whose judgment and statesmanship we have 
always given the greatest weight, that large advantages will come 
from this provision, and all of us indulge the hope that the fullest 
expectation in this direction may be realized. 

As to the internal-revenue sections, I only wish to say that the 
provisions of the House bill have in substance been maintained by 
the Conference Committee. It will be remembered that we reduced 
the tax upon tobacco and snuff from eight cents, which is the rate 
under existing law, to four cents. The Senate struck out all our 
internal-revenue provisions — every paragraph and every line. But 
we have been enabled to secure a reduction of the tax from eight 
cents to six cents a pound — a reduction of 25 per cent — upon to- 
bacco and snuff. We yielded the fo^ir-cent reduction and agreed 
to fix the tax at six cents, and have provided for a rebate upon all 
unbroken packages. So far as concerns special licenses to dealers, 
special taxes, and all those vexatious and annoying restraints which 
have been put upon the tobacco-grower, the tobacco-dealer, and the 
tobacco-trader, we wipe them all out ; and over 650,000 citizens of 
the United States who have been paying these vexatious little taxes 
will, after the passage of this bill, be relieved from their payment. 
We have also provided that the farmers, the growers of tobacco, in 
every part of this country shall be immediately relieved from all 



THE CONFERENCE COMMITTEE'S REPORT. 481 

taxation and all burdens. This provision goes into effect at once, 
so that hereafter, if this bill should become a law, the farmers of 
the United States will be as free to sell their tobacco unrestrained 
by internal-revenue provisions as they are free to sell their wheat or 
their cotton or any other product of the farm. 

The bill is protective in every paragraph, and American on every"" 
page. It recognizes in its fullness the great economic principle 
which the Republican party has advocated so long and which it holds 
so dear, and which has secured to this country an unexampled pros- 
perity. This legislation is not an experiment ; it has the approval of 
experience. Our present prosperity, our advance since 1860 in all 
that goes to make a nation strong and great, and its people happy, 
contented, and progressive, bear testimony to the wisdom and patriot- 
ism of the great principle which underlies this bill. 



NEW en'gla:n"d and the futuee. 

Address at the New England Dinner at the Continental 
Hotel, Philadelphia, December 22, 1890. 

[As Reported for the Society. 1 

Mr. President and Gentlemen of the New England So- 
ciety OF Pennsylvania : I make grateful acknowledgment for the 
invitation which permits me to join in the observance of this inter- 
esting anniversary. 

We dwell to-night in history. Reminiscence and retrospect rule 
the hour and the occasion. We are in spirit with the Pilgrim and 
the Puritan. This Society is a living tribute to them, and serves to 
hold in perpetuity, for the present and those who shall come after, 
the character, courage, and example of those who gave birth to liberty 
on our soil, and secured political freedom and independence to them- 
selves and their posterity. 

Their descendants, and those not their descendants, in this year 
1890, grateful for the inestimable blessings bequeathed to them by 
the fathers and founders of New England, who two hundred and 
seventy years ago landed at Plymouth and unfurled the standard of 
their faith, are meeting to-night in the cities and villages throughout 
the Republic, to cherish their memories and learn again the lessons 
of their trials and triumphs. Characterization of the Puritan has 
been undertaken by author and orator, friendly and otherwise, almost 
from the time he first set foot on this continent, and I present you 
that of George William Curtis, as embodying both criticism and 
eulogy, spoken only as that gifted orator can speak. 

This was his picture of the Puritan : 

He was narrow, bigoted, sour, hard, intolerant ; but he was the man whom 
God sifted three kingdoms to find, as the seed grain wherewith to plant a free 
Republic. He has done more for human liberty than any other man in history. 

We have a right to take just pride in such an ancestry, to proudly 
recall the noble men and true women who, braving all dangers and 



NEW ENGLAND AND THE FUTURE. 483 

hardships, laid broad and deep the foundations of those institutions 
that liave changed the whole face of the northern hemisphere, and 
given to the world a civilization without a parallel in recorded his- 
tory, and to the struggling races of men everywhere assurances of the 
realization of their best and highest aspirations. TVe do not pause to 
discuss their religious forms and beliefs ; all will agree that, without 
loss to religion or piety, a broader and more comprehensive Christian 
philanthropy now prevails. 

Serious was the character of the Puritans — sober, earnest, stern, 
full of faith in God and man. They were direct and practical. They 
indulged little in theory or diplomacy. They dealt with facts and 
conditions. They were not circuitous or strategic. Their purposes 
were not veiled, and they struck straight at the mark. The jester and 
trifler had no place among them. Earnest men and true were re- 
quired for pioneers in the cause of liberty, and none but such were 
numbered in that noble band. One hundred and one landed from 
the Mayflower. One half of their number, or nearly so, died from 
exposure and hardship during the first year, but those who survived 
have influenced the character and directed the consciences of the mil- 
lions who have peopled and who now people this great American 
commonwealth. They struck the blow ; they endured the privations ; 
they kept the faith, not alone for themselves, but for mankind ; they 
looked forward, and not backward. It was to escape the past and its 
environments that led them from home, and ties, and kindred. Their 
opportunity was the new field, their hope and faith — the future 
which, under God, they were to make for themselves. For this they 
suffered ; for this they builded, and they builded well and strong. 

" No lack was in thy primal stock, 

No weakling founders builded here ; 
These were the men of Plymouth Rock, 
The Huguenot and the Cavalier," 

It has been said that New England blood flows through the veins 
of one fourth of our entire population. But New England character 
and New England civilization course through every vein and artery 
of the Republic ; and if the New Englanders are not everywhere 
found, their light illumines the pathway of our progress, and their 
aims and ideas permeate and strengthen our whole jjolitical structure. 
They have fought and bled upon every battlefield of tlie Nation, from 
Concord and Bunker Hill to Gettysburg and Appomattox. They 
have shaped largely the course of the Republic in the past ; it will be 
well for the Republic if their influence shall be felt and enforced in 



484 SPEECHES AND ADDRESSES OP WILLIAM McKINLEY. 

its course in the future. They were not the emigrants of fortune, of 
curiosity, or of venture, but a small and determined body of men who 
left the mother country to work out a better destiny for themselves 
and for those who were to follow, and to establish a community dedi- 
cated to liberty and individual manhood forever. Here was a colony 
which would not brook oppression ; which loved God, and had faith 
in man. 

Upon these ideas there has been erected the mightiest union of 
free States and of a free people which ever existed upon the face of 
the earth. Forty-four free and independent commonwealths, sixty- 
two millions of people, acknowledging allegiance to one flag, each 
concerned in the welfare of the other, and all united in Avorking out 
the common good and the common destiny ; with an industrial 
wealth and prosperity rivaling, if not excelling, the best and oldest 
nations of Europe ; with science and invention and literature keeping 
pace with commerce ; with railroads and telegraphs unequaled any- 
where ; with free schools whose doors swing outward, inviting the 
youth of the land to their treasures of knowledge. Imperishable 
monuments these to the truths which animated the fatliers of New 
England and which have inspired their sons. The source and foun- 
tain from which these blessings flowed, which we now hold and enjoy 
was love of liberty — liberty of conscience, liberty of thought and 
speech, liberty under just and equal laws, liberty of opportunity — the 
liberty which defends the manhood of the citizen, and recognizes as 
one brotherhood the whole human family. 

Mr. President, what has been gained through centuries of struggle 
and sacrifice must be kept and preserved. The future must be worthy 
of the glories which have gone before. This is our trust. Nothing 
must be abated of vigilance or duty on our part, that we may hand 
over this priceless heritage unimpaired to our children. Nothing 
gives greater hope of the future than genuine respect and affectionate 
reverence for that which is noble and good in the past. The future 
is safe, if we will keep the spirit of New England alive in our hearts 
and homes, and firmly and resolutely adhere to the principles which 
they taught and which have thus far guided us in safety and honor. 
We must not yield to wrong, trifle with justice, or surrender to preju- 
dice. The path of wrong must not be pursued, because for the mo- 
ment it appears the easiest road to travel. The smoothest paths to 
human sight are sometimes the roughest to human feet. The words 
of Washington in his first message to Congress (April 30, 1789) should 
be borne in the minds and hearts of this generation as well as those 



NEW ENGLAND AND THE FUTURE. 485 

to come after. " We ought to be persuaded," said the Father of his 
Country, " that the propitious smiles of Heaven can never be expected 
upon a nation that disregards the eternal rules of right which Heaven 
itself has ordained." 

Noble sentiments, worthy their great author, worthy to be en- 
graven upon the hearts of his countrymen. Commercial interests 
and material progress should have our constant concern and our 
close consideration, but human rights and constitutional privileges 
must not be forgotten in the race for wealth and commercial su- 
premacy. We must be just and deal righteously, bearing whatever 
exactions or inconveniences justice and righteousness may tempora- 
rily impose. Duty must be master and right supreme. The govern- 
ment of the people must be by the people, and not by a few of the 
people ; it must rest upon the free consent of the governed and all of 
the governed. Anything short of this fails in the fundamental pur- 
pose of the fathers, whose memories we cherish to-night. Anything 
short of this is a nullification of organic law, the Magna Charta of 
our rights and privileges. The weak must be strengthened by the 
help of the strong. The powerful elements in our country must 
come to the help of the weaker elements, that all may be strength- 
ened and lifted up, and the great plan of the Government be executed 
as it was ordained. Power, it must be remembered, which is secured 
by oppression or usurpation, or by any form of injustice, is soon de- 
throned. We have no right in law or morals to usurp that which be- 
longs to another, whether it is property or power. Both are repug- 
nant to justice, both in contravention of law, both against good con- 
science. 

I have an abiding faith in the ultimate justice of the people. In- 
justice and wrong can not long triumph in popular government. 
The future glory of the Republic would seem to have no bounds set 
upon it, no limit to its development or destiny, if all of us practice 
the simple code of the fathers, " Liberty, justice, and equality," the 
trinity of their faith and the corner-stone of our hoi)e. In forgetful- 
ness of these fundamental truths lurks the danger and menace to the 
future. We need in this generation that earnest purpose, that rugged 
devotion to principle and duty, that faith in manhood and reliance 
upon the Supreme Euler which marked the early New England home 
and character, and that resolute firmness which gave force to their 
convictions, result to their resolves, and effect to their laws. This is 
our anchor of safety. These annual gatherings of the sons of New 
England serve a noble purpose in keeping alive the spirit of the 



486 SPEECHES AND ADDRESSES OP WILLIAM McKINLEY, 



fathers. God grant that the fires of liberty which they kindled, and 
which have filled the whole world with hope and light and glory, may 
never, never be extinguished ! 

I bid you, in the language of the beloved Whittier — 

" Hold fast to your Puritan heritage ; 
But let the free light of the age, 
Its life, its hope, its sweetness add 
To the sterner faith your fathers had." 

And, speaking of our country and the future, I leave you those 
other words of Whittier : 

" We give thy natal day to hope, 
country of our love and prayer ! 
Thy way is down no fatal slope, 
But up to freer sun and air." 

[Long-continued applause.] 



A EEPLY TO MR CLEVELAND. 

Address at the Lincoln" Banquet of the Ohio Eepublican 
League at Toledo, Ohio, February 12, 1891. 

Mr. President and Gentlemen of the Ohio Republican 
League : It is worth something, in the discussion of economic ques- 
tions, to have an avowal from our political opponents of the real 
meaning and effect of their economic theories. It is always well in 
political controversy to understand one another. It was, therefore, 
gratifying to the friends of protection to have that eminent Demo- 
cratic leader from the State of New York, on a recent occasion in the 
capital city of our State, make open confession of the purposes which 
he and his party associates aim to accomplish by a free-trade tariff. 
Assigned to respond to the inspiring sentiment, " American Citizen- 
ship," he made " cheapness " the theme of his discourse, and counted 
it among the highest aspirations of American life. His avowal is 
only that which protectionists have always claimed to be the inevitable 
tendency of his tariff policy, which exalts cheap goods from abroad 
above good wages at home. 

The tariff reformer gravely asks why we want manufacturing 
establishments in the United States, when we can buy our goods in 
other countries as cheap as we can manufacture them at home, if not 
cheaper. Why maintain defensive tariffs at all ? Why not permit 
foreign goods to come in unfettered by any customhouse restraints ? 
Why not admit comjieting foreign products free, or at a low revenue 
duty ? The best answer — the most conclusive one — is written in our 
own experience under the last free-trade tariff regime of the Demo- 
cratic party, when cheap foreign goods, invited by the low tariff of 
that period, destroyed our manufactories, checked our mining, sus- 
pended our public works and private enterprises, sent our working- 
men from work to idleness or to the already overcrowded field of 
agriculture, from remunerative to starvation wages or to no wages at 
all, surrendered our markets to the foreigner, giving work to his 



488 SPEECHES AND ADDRESSES OF WILLIAM McKINLEY. 

shops and his men by taking it from our shops and our men, and 
diminished domestic production and domestic employment, thereby 
increasing those of other countries and other peoples. This was an 
era of " cheapness " and of " poverty," to which the great Democratic 
leader and his fraction of the party want us to return, and which they 
have " consecrated " themselves to secure. 

The masses of the people are in no temper for such a suggestion, 
and they will never consent to the inauguration of a policy which 
will scale down their wages and render it harder to obtain the neces- 
saries of life. The "cheap coats" to which the gentleman is so 
much attached do not tempt them, for many remember that in pre- 
vious free-trade eras of our history they were too poor to buy them at 
any price. Xo matter how low the nominal sum exacted for the 
merchandise, it was beyond their power to buy, for it was made cheap 
at the expense of their earnings and labor, the price of the merchan- 
dise never diminishing in proportion to the reduced wages which 
labor was forced to take. It is to maintain this character of " cheap- 
ness " that the Democratic leader raises his voice and offers his serv- 
ices once more to his countrymen. Hearken to his words : 

And when they [the laboring menj are borne down with burdens greater than 
they can bear, and are made the objects of scorn by hard taskmasters, we will not 
leave their side. 

Can any man familiar with the history of his own country believe 
that such' an utterance was made in soberness and good faith by a 
leader of the Democratic party ? — a party which has imposed the only 
involuntary tasks and burdens ever borne by American citizens ; 
which for nearly three quarters of a century kept the labor of almost 
one half of our great country in slavery, bought and sold as chattels, 
and which repeatedly, by the enactment of free-trade tariffs, under- 
took to place in industrial slavery the other half ; which strove by 
every possible means to dedicate our vast public domain not to free 
labor but to slave labor ; and which now offensively denies to labor in 
one section of the country the use of the ballot, which is the freeman's 
defense against wrong and oppression. " However much," says this 
disciple of Cobden, " others may mock and deride cheapness and the 
poor, we will stand forth in their defense." Strange words to those 
acquainted with Democratic history and Democratic practices ; 
strange in the light of existing Democratic purpose, which openly 
advocates a revenue-tariff policy to make the poor poorer, and which 
offers to them in old age, when no longer able to work, the refuge of 
an almshouse as their hope and home ! They defend American labor. 



A REPLY TO MR. CLEVELAND. 489 

whose overwhelming and controlling majority has not now and never 
has had any regard for it ; who proposed in 1888, and again propose, 
if invested with power, to tear down the tariS barriers which alone 
stand between our labor and the cheap and less-rewarded labor of the 
Old World ! Their professed defense is a delusion and a snare — the 
kind of defense which destroys and degrades the dignity and charac- 
ter of American labor, and forces it down to the level of the poorest 
paid labor of Europe. What think you of this policy to exalt the 
American home, the foundation and cornerstone of our citizenship, 
by degrading its head ? 

This cry of " cheapness " is not new. It rang through England 
nearly fifty years ago. It was the voice and philosophy of Cobden ; 
it was the false and alluring appeal urged for the reversal of Great 
Britain's industrial policy from protection to free trade. It was the 
hypocritical cant against which the beloved Kingsley thundered his 
bold denunciations — that dear and revered churchman, whose mem- 
ory is cherished wherever the English tongue is spoken. Here is his 
characterization of it : 

Next you have the Manchester school, from which Heaven defend us ! For 
all narrow, conceited, hypocritical, and anarchic schemes of the universe the Cob- 
den and Bright one is exactly the worst. To pretend to be the workman's friends 
by keeping down the price of bread when all they want thereby is to keep down 
wages and increase profits, and in the meantime to widen the gulf between the 
workingman and all that is time-honored and chivalrous in English society, that 
they may make the men their divided slaves — that is, perhaps, half unconscious- 
ly, for there are excellent men among them, the game of the Manchester school. 

I am charitable enough to believe that many of our tariff reform- 
ers, blind followers of Cobden, are wholly unconscious of the end, the 
ultimate and disastrous end, of their doctrine and policy. Is Ameri- 
can manhood to be degraded that merchandise may be cheap? Are 
cheap goods at such a cost worthy of our high purpose and destiny ? 
And can we believe that he who would advocate them at such a sacri- 
fice is the true friend of his countrymen, however loud his profes- 
sions? Cheap coats at any price, at any sacrifice, even to the robbery 
of labor, are not the chief objects of American civilization, and to 
make them so is neither praiseworthy nor patriotic, nor does such a 
sentiment represent a noble aim in American life. We scorn cheap 
coats upon any such terms or conditions. They are " nasty " at such 
a price. 

Our philosophy includes the grower of the wool, the weaver of the 
fabric, the seamstress, and the tailor. Our tariff reformers have no 



490 SPEECHES AND ADDRESSES OF WILLIAM McKINLEY. 

thought of these toilers. They can bear their hard tasks in pinching 
poverty for the sake of cheap coats, which prove by far the dearest 
when measured by sweat and toil. Our tariff reformers concern 
themselves only about cheap coats and cheap shoes. We do not over 
look the comfort of those who make the coats and make the shoes 
and who provide the wool and the cloth, the hides and the leather. 

I gratefully commend to the new leader of the Democracy the 
patriotic utterances of its old leader, Thomas Jefferson. I quote from 
one of his letters to Jean Baptiste Say : 

The prohibiting duties we lay on all articles of foreign manufacture, which 
prudence requires us to establish at home with the patriotic determination of 
every good citizen to use 7io foreign article which can be made within ourselves, 
without regard to difference of price, secures us against a relapse into foreign de- 
pendency. 

Also the following from his letter to Benjamin Austin : 

We must now place the manufacturer by the side of the agriculturist. Ex- 
perience has taught me that manufacturers are now as necessary to our inde- 
pendence as to our comfort, and if those who quote me as of a different opinion 
will keep pace with me in purchasing nothing foreign, where an equivalent of 
domestic fabric can be obtained, without regard to difference in price, it will not 
be our fault if we do not soon have a supply at home equal to our demand. 

Jefferson was solicitous that the people should buy nothing 
abroad which could be had at home. He set the example of buying 
tlie domestic goods instead of the foreign goods, even though the 
former cost more than the latter. He did not have that depth of 
sympathy for cheap foreign goods which the new leader of the Dem- 
ocratic party boastfully confesses dwells in his breast. Jefferson was 
for the home product and the home producer, and his exalted patriot- 
ism is commended to those who are leading the party from its ancient 
moorings. 

It is of very little consequence to men who have no means of pay- 
ment, who are on half pay and half time, that foreign products are 
nominally cheap. The true test of cost, whether high or low, is not 
the nominal price but the comparative ease or difficulty of payment. 
Does the return which we receive for our labor and the products of 
our labor and land make them cheap or make them dear? This is 
the question — the real question. Those things of necessity or com- 
fort are the dearest which are the most difficult to buy and the hard- 
est to secure by the fruits of human labor. 

I readily grant that persons living on money already accumulated 
— whose chief employment is clipping coupons; who have fixed 



A REPLY TO MR. CLEVELAND. 49 1 

incomes and inherited wealth, dedicated to selfishness and with- 
drawn from the channels of trade ; who never earned the price of the 
" cheapest " and " nastiest " coat by their own exertions or labor- 
might be benefited for a time at least by cheap foreign goods ; but 
why should they of all others be singled out for the considerate' care 
of the tariff reformers ? They can get on under any system of tariffs 
or taxation. As a rule, they manage to escape many of the burdens 
of local taxation from which their poorer fellow-citizens can not flee. 
I have not failed to observe— nor have you— that the men who have 
their money unemployed in productive enterprises complain most of 
taxation and usually pay the least. Their capital is not in active busi- 
ness. It is secure from the panics and financial difliculties which 
now and then sweep over the country. When lands go down their 
loans go up. The depression of prices and wages only serves to in- 
crease the value of their money and mortgages. " Theirs is the capi- 
tal," as Cardinal Manning puts it, " which pays no taxes and gives 
no charity ; laid up in secret, and barren of all good to the owner or 
his neighbor." The fiscal policy of our Nation is not fashioned for 
such as these. It is broader, more rational, and more humane. The 
poor and also the enterprising must have some care and consideration. 
To them we must look for our prosperity ; upon their intelligence and 
welfare rest the permanence and purity of our institutions. They are 
the strength and the pillars of the Eepublic. 

Prof. Huxley, the British scientist, says, and says truthfully : 

A population whose labor is insufficiently remunerated must become physic- 
ally and morally unhealthy and socially unstable, and though it may succeed for 
a while in industrial competition by reason of the cheapness of its produce, it 
must in the end fall through hideous misery and degradation to utter ruin. 

Our population must be saved from such a fate. Our future must 
not rest upon such a citizenship. 

If " buying where you can buy the cheapest " narrows the field of 
employment at home, it will be the very dearest of all buying, the 
most expensive of all trading, the most unprofitable of all exchange. 
The more demands there are for labor, the more avenues inviting em- 
ployment and enterprise, and the more opportunities for the capitalist 
to invest his money, the better each will be off, the better each will be 
remunerated, the wider the general prosperity ; and here is the con- 
nection between varied industries, fair wages, and fair profits. 

There must be something for the American citizen more than 
cheap clothes. There must be some higher incentive than a cheap 
coat and a bare subsistence. Tlie farmer's products must bring him 
32 



492 SPEECHES AND ADDRESSES OP WILLIAM McKINLEY. 

fair returns for his toil and investment. The workingman's wages 
must be governed by his work and worth, and not by what he can 
barely live upon. He must have wages that bring hope and heart 
and ambition, which give promise of a future brighter and better 
than the past, which shall promote his comfort and independence, 
and which shall stimulate him to a higher and better and more intel- 
ligent citizenship. This was what Lincoln and Garfield taught. 
These were the principles with which they inspired the people. It 
was not the coats they wore, but the great ideas they stood for, which 
the people loved and still love. The Great Emancipator illustrated 
his aversion to " cheap men " when he made them free and gave them 
their own earnings and labor, and the beloved Garfield showed his 
sympathy with God's poor when he voted to make them citizens. 

The gentleman who is now so insistent for cheap necessaries of 
life, while in office and clothed with authority was unwilling that 
sugar, an article of prime necessity to every household, should come 
untaxed to the American j^eople, when it was known that it was an 
annual burden upon them of $60,000,000. He stood then as the un- 
compromising friend of dear sugar for the masses. During all his 
years at the head of the Government he was dishonoring one of our 
precious metals, one of our own great products. He endeavored even 
before his inauguration to office to stop the coinage of silver dollars, 
and afterward and to the close of his administration persistently used 
his power to that end. He was determined to contract the circulat- 
iuff medium and demonetize one of the coins of commerce, limit the 
volume of money among the people, make money scarce and therefore 
dear. He would have increased the value of money and diminished 
the value of everything else — money the master, everything else its 
servant. He was not thinking of " the poor " then. He had left 
" their side." He was not " standing forth in their defense." Cheap 
coats, cheap labor, and dear money ; the sponsor and promoter of 
these, professing to stand guard over the welfare of the poor and lowly ! 
Was there ever more glaring inconsistency or reckless assumption ? 

The tarifE reformer has at last, in his wild ecstasy over a so-called 
victory, been betrayed into an avowal of his real design. He believes 
that poverty is a blessing to be promoted and encouraged, and that a 
shrinkage in the value of everything but money is a National bene- 
diction. He no longer conceals his love for cheap merchandise, even 
though it entails the beating down of the price of labor and curtails 
the comforts and opportunities of the masses. He has uncovered at 
last. He would make the cheapest articles of comfort and necessity 



A REPLY TO MR. CLEVELAND. 493 

dearer to the poor, for he would diminish the rewards of their 
labor. 

The Democratic victory has had still further uses. It has estab- 
lished beyond dispute or controversy the partnership between the 
Democratic free-trade leaders of the United States and the states- 
men and ruling classes of Great Britain. It is a powerful alliance — 
a resolute and aggressive combination. If you have any doubt of it, 
I beg you will read the English press and the Democratic press of 
the United States just before and since the elections, and you will be 
convinced that they are fighting in the same unpatriotic cause, en- 
gaged in the same crusade against our industries. They rejoice 
together over the same victory. Theirs is a joint warfare against 
American labor and American wages, a plot against the industrial 
life of the Nation, a blow at the American Commonwealth. Is it 
any wonder that the chief of Democratic-tariif reformers, the lion. 
David A. "Wells, of Connecticut, should have felt constrained to ad- 
vise his copartners across the Atlantic that they were retarding the 
cause they wished to promote by too open a demonstration ? 

In a letter in September last to the Right Honorable A. J. Mun- 
della, M. P., whom Mr. Wells addresses as " My dear Mundella," 
he says : 

If it is the desire of the British people to induce the people of this country 
[the United States] to maintain and extend their existing policy of imposing high 
or prohibitive duties on imports, I can conceive of no more effective way of achiev- 
ing such results than the holding of a series of popular meetings, like that at 
Sheffield, for the purpose of denouncing the McKinley tariff bill, and favoring 
retaliatory legislation on the part of the government of Great Britain. Such ac- 
tion on the part of any considerable number of the people of Great Britain is 
suggestive of a desire to intermeddle with our internal affairs. There is nothing 
which the people of the United States will quicker resent than even a suspicion 
of such purpose. The high-tariff advocates in this country have been quick to 
see the opportunity afforded them by the Sheffield meeting, and have tried to 
make capital for their cause by using the above ideas to create popular prejudice 
against the policy of tariff reform. 

He admonishes them to be less demonstrative and more diplo- 
matic, and leave to the members of the firm in the United States the 
open management of the crusade against our protective tariff and 
industrial independence. 

Mr. President, that country is the least prosperous where low 
prices are secured through low wages. Cheap foreign goods-, free or 
practically free, in competition with domestic goods involve cheap 
labor at home or dependence upon foreign manufacturers. Those 



404 SPEECHES AND ADDRESSES OF WILLIAM McKIXLEY. 

who advocate duties solely for revenue see only as a result clieaper 
prices, which are but temporary at best, and do not see the other side, 
that of lower wages, cheaper labor, agricultural depression, and gen- 
eral distress. The protective system, by encouraging capital to engage 
in productive enterprises, has accorded to labor, skill, and genius 
hio-her opportunities and greater rewards than could otherwise be 
secured, defending them against ruinous foreign competition, while 
promoting home competition, and giving the American consumer 
better products at lower prices and the farmer a bettor market than 
was ever enjoyed under the free-trade tariffs of the Democratic party. 
England is the only country which imposes a tariff exclusively 
for revenue. This has been her policy for nearly half a century. 
It has therefore been tried, and under the most favorable circum- 
stances. Does her condition present a picture inviting to Ameri- 
cans? Is the condition of the great body of her people encouraging, 
or hopeful, or assuring ? Listen to the words of Cardinal Manning, 
written in December, 1890, and published in the Nineteenth Cen- 
tury, an English magazine. No one will question their sincerity and 
truth : 

There is no doubt that free trade, freedom of contract, buying in the cheap- 
est market and selling in the dearest, are axioms of commercial prudence. They 
are hardly worthy of being called a science. Nevertheless, this freedom of trade 
has immensely multiplied all branches of commerce and developed the energies 
of all our industrial population. But it has created two things— the irrespon- 
sible wealth which stagnates, and the starvation wages of the labor market. This 
cheapest market is the market of the lacklands, penniless, and helpless. In four 
of our western counties wages are so low that men come to London by thousands 
every year, and, being here, crowd the dock-gates and underbid the permanent 
worliingmen, who have already reason not to be content with their hire. We 
have these two worlds always and openly face to face— the world of wealth and 
the world of want ; the world of wealth saying in his heart, " I sit as queen over 
all toilers and traders," and the world of want not knowing what may be on the 
morrow. Every city and town has its unemployed. Milli(ms are in poverty. 
Agriculture languishes ; land is going out of cultivation ; trades are going down ; 
mills and furnaces are working half time ; strikes run througli every industry.^ Is 
there a blight upon our mountainous wealth? At this day we have three millions 
of poor who in the course of the year are relieved in some way by the poor laws. 

Does this plain statement from this great Christian teacher and 
philanthropist, who speaks from knowledge, incline Americans to 
adopt a policy which has made these things possible and true? Do 
the conditions he describes offer anything to the agriculturist of this 
country better than he has already, or so good ; or to the laborer a 
hope or an aspiration which does not make the heart sick; or to 



A HEPLY TO MR, CLEVELAND. 495 

our countrymen generally, whatever may be their occupation, a wish 
to transplant the want and misery here ? God forbid ! We want 
none of it. Our hearts go out in sympathy for the sufferers beyond 
the sea, and we shall contest every inch of the ground which points 
that way for our industrial people. 

Mr. President, we find nothing in history or in our own experi- 
ence to justify the reversal of our protective system or change in 
our protective laws. We have nothing to take back; nothing to 
apologize for, A low tariff has always increased the importation of 
foreign goods until our money ran out ; multiplied our foreign ob- 
ligations; produced a balance of trade against the country; sup- 
planted the domestic producer and manufacturer ; impaired the farm- 
er's home market without improving his market abroad ; undermined 
domestic prosperity ; decreased the industries of the Nation ; dimin- 
ished the value of nearly all our property and investments; and 
robbed labor of its just rewards. The lower the tariff the more wide- 
spread and aggravated have been these conditions which paralyze our 
progress and industries. This is the verdict of history. 

Industry and property were excessively depressed from 1784 to 
1790, and again from 1818 to 1824, under the low tariffs then in 
operation. Also from 1837 to the end of 1842, under the compro- 
mise act of 1833 ; and again from 1846 to 1861, under the free-trade 
tariffs of 1846 and 1857, The depression which prevailed during all 
these periods was felt in every individual pursuit and National in- 
dustry. On the contrary, the industries and energies of the Nation 
revived as if by magic from 1825 to 1834, under the protective tariffs 
of 1824 and 1828 ; and also from 1843 to the end of 1846 under the 
protective tariff of 1842. Our progress in industrial development and 
prosperity from 1861 to the present time, under the Morrill tariff and 
its supplements, finds no parallel in the world's history. Labor was 
never better rewarded than it is now. 

Mr. Edward Atkinson, a careful student and himself a tariff re- 
former, recently wrote : 

The share of the annual product which is now falling to workmen, in the 
strictest sense, is a bigger share of a bigger product than workmen have ever at- 
tained before in this or in any other country. 

Invention, improved machinery, and new processes, stimulated by 
our industrial conditions, made possible by protective laws, have, im- 
proved the products of our workshops, and have brought articles of 
comfort and necessity within the easy reach of the masses with no 
diminution of the rewards of their labor. Thirty years of pro- 



496 SPEECHES AND ADDRESSES OF WILLIAM McKINLEY. 

tection have brought us from the lowest to the highest rank of 
industrial progress ; have lifted up our labor to that high plane so 
necessary to American citizenship and equal suffrage ; have given to 
agriculture a home market unrivaled on the globe ; have given to 
the Nation's promises a name without a financial stain ; have raised 
our National credit from dishonor to honor, our National obliga- 
tions from a discount to a premium. Every American must have 
a feeling of pride in such a record. If we have cheap garments, 
they are woven here ; the wool was grown here ; the labor was em- 
ployed here; the machinery made here; the wages paid here; and 
the purchase price kept here — all promoting the general good, all 
tending to the welfare and prosperity of the people. Shall we turn 
away from this ? The weight of the nations is overwhelmingly on 
our side. Which is right — the British Government, whose colonies 
and dependencies, with two exceptions, have protective tariffs (appli- 
cable not alone to other nations but operative against England itself), 
or all the rest of the civilized world ? Call the roll of the nations : 
which are for protection ? Germany, France, Italy, Spain, Mexico, 
Canada, South America, Portugal, Denmark, most of Australasia, 
Switzerland, Austria and Hungary, Russia, Sweden and Norway, and 
the United States of America. Which are against protection? Eng- 
land, New South Wales, and New Zealand. It will be noted that 
" tariff for revenue only," or " tariff reform," is almost exclusively an 
English decoration. But how stand the people of the world on this 
question ? At least 430,000,000 people are in favor of protection ; 
38,000,000 of Britons are against it, to whom must be added those 
Americans whose numbers are not known, who, while living under 
our flag, seem to follow another. That is how the world's jury stands. 

We have no controversy with Great Britain or her fiscal system. 
She is free to adopt the one which her statesmen believe will best 
subserve her welfare and that of her people. Each nation must settle 
its own domestic policy ; each is supreme in that sphere, and should 
brook no interference from the outside. We exercise that undoubted 
fundamental right ourselves and for ourselves, repelling all outside 
intrusion, and we accord the same right to our sister nations, free 
from any intrusion on our part. Each nation must work out its own 
destiny in its own way, and is accountable only to the Supreme Ruler 
and to its own citizens. 

We believe the American policy is best adapted to our citizenship 
and civilization, and this belief is sustained by the highest American 
authorities from Washington down, and by a hundred years of ex- 



A REPLY TO MR. CLEVELAND. 497 

perience. We know what it has already accomplished for a self- 
governed people. The world knows of the wonderful progress we have 
made. If this policy is to be reversed, it must be done not by clamor 
and misrepresentation, not by schoolmen and theorists, not by false- 
hood and hypocritical solicitude for the poor man, not by exaggerated 
laudation of the cheap coat, but after the fullest discussion and in- 
vestigation by the sober and intelligent judgment of the majority con- 
stitutionally registered. It will never be so reversed, while we remain 
a Nation of political equals. Time and experience have vindicated 
the great system ; time and truth will vindicate the new law, which 
was founded upon it. False witnesses will be confounded by the un- 
impeachable testimony of trade and experience. Their portents have 
already been impeached. False prophecy must fall before good times 
and abounding prosperity. Campaign prices have already been con- 
victed as camjDaign lies. New industries are being founded ; others 
now established are enlarging their capacity. Idle mills are being 
started. The only menace to our advancement and prosperity, to 
our wage-earners and farming interests, is the party which is pledged 
to the repeal of the new law and the substitution of the British 
system in its place. Free and full discussion will avert the danger. 
Nothing else will. 



THE DIRECT-TAX REFUNDING BILL. 

Speech in the House of Representatives, Fifty-first 
Congress, February 24, 1891. 

[-From the Congressional Record.'] 

The House having under consideration Senate bill iNo. 173, known as the 
Direct-Tax Refunding Bill, Mr. McKinley said— 

Mr. Speaker : The rule which the Committee on Rules directed 
me to report is for the purpose of giving the House of Representatives 
an opportunity to vote upon what is commonly known as the Direct- 
Tax Bill. This bill passed the Fiftieth Congress with very little 
division in the Senate and by an almost two-thirds majority in the 
House of Representatives. Gentlemen have said that we give no time 
for the discussion of this bill. There is no public measure, I take it, 
that has been so thoroughly discussed in both branches of Congress and 
before the American people as the measure for the return of this direct 
tax to the several States which paid it during the period of the war for 
the prosecution thereof. As I have said, this bill passed the Senate 
and House in the Fiftieth Congress, and upon a conference report be- 
tween the House and the Senate it passed without division in the Sen- 
ate and by an overwhelming majority in the House of Representatives. 
It went to the then President of the United States, Mr. Cleveland, 
and he vetoed the bill ; and in the Senate of the United States, upon 
the question whether the bill should pass notwithstanding the veto 
of the President, forty-eight Senators voted in the affirmative and 
only nine in the negative. And gentlemen will remember well that 
in the Fiftieth Congress the House had no opportunity to vote upon 
the veto message of the President. 

Now, Mr. Speaker, as to the equity of this proposition : Twenty- 
seven States of this Union paid this assessment levied by the Federal 
Government, and ten States did not pay half of their quotas. Of the 
ten seceding States, one paid all, two did not pay over 6 per cent, 
one paid 20 per cent, another 27 per cent, and the others about 



THE DIRECT-TAX REFUNDING BILL. 499 

50 per cent. If all had paid the assessment, then it would be equi- 
table, in my view, to leave this money in the National Treasury ; but 
twenty-seven States having paid and ten States not having paid, it is 
unequal and inequitable that this money should not be refunded to 
the States that paid, unless the Government means to make the de- 
faulting States pay (which nobody suggests) the sums assessed upon 
them. 

It is said that this is unconstitutional. I see by the minority re- 
port of the Committee on the Judiciary, made by my distinguished 
friend from Alabama [Mr. Gates], that he declares the bill to be un- 
constitutional. The President of the United States, Mr. Cleveland, 
expressed the same opinion ; but my distinguished friend from Texas 
[Mr. Culberson], a member of the Committee on the Judiciary and a 
very able lawyer, declares in his minority views that he does not 
oppose the bill on the ground of unconstitutionality. He says : 

I am opposed to the passage of this measure, not because of any constitu- 
tional objection, but for the reason that, as it is intended as a measure of relief 
from the unequal burdens of the war, it stops short of even or fair justice to those 
who have endured and are enduring manifest and confessed injustice from the 
same cause. The Supreme Court has time and time again decided that the fund 
in the Treasury known as the " captured and abandoned property fund " ($10,000,- 
000) does not belong to the United States, but is the property of those from whom 
the property was taken : that the Government holds the fund as trustee for the 
owners, and that there was no legal impediment to its recovery except the bar 
of limitations against suits in the Court of Claims. For the reason that this 
money belongs to those who did not adhere to the Union in the late war (a reason 
denounced by the Supreme Court as furnishing no legal impediment), Congress 
has refused to remove the bar of limitation. Any measure for the restoration of 
money wrongfully taken or unjustly withheld from the people of any particular 
section of the country (as in this case from the North) by reason of the exigencies 
of war, without a recognition or provision for a case of equal hardship and more 
manifest injustice, as herein cited, from the South, is doing justice by halves and 
ought not to be encouraged. 

After the President's message, a gentleman who was a very promi- 
nent member of this House, and a distinguished lawyer, an eminent 
Democrat, Mr. J. Kandolph Tucker, of Virginia, made an argument 
in answer to the message of the President, which he closed with 
these words : " It must be constitutional and right to return this 
money because it is unconstitutional and wrong to retain it ; and it 
seems to me this clearly expresses the situation." The best lawyers 
of the House and the Senate are clear about the constitutionality of 
this bill, after the fullest investigation and discussion. 

As to the question whether or not we shall have money enough in 



500 SPEECHES AND ADDRESSES OF WILLIAM McKINLEY. 



the Treasury to pay tliis sum — a question that is raised by the gentle- 
man from Alabama [Mr. Herbert] — I want to say, Mr. Speaker, that 
with the amendment which will be offered by the gentleman from 
Wisconsin [Mr. Caswell] there need be no apprehension in that direc- 
tion. The amendment to be proposed requires that the Legislatures 
of the several States shall take action touching the receipt of this 
money before it is paid ; so that it is not at all likely that the money 
can be paid out at once, but payment will extend over the period of 
one year or more. The Government is able, in my judgment — and in 
this opinion I am confirmed by those whose opportunities are better 
than mine for knowing — to meet every dollar of this indebtedness 
without causing any deficit. The gentleman complains that the 
large surplus in the Treasury at the close of President Cleveland's 
administration has been dissipated. True, there is less of a surplus 
there now than then, but there are less Government obligations out- 
standing. AVe have used the money in paying our debts, which 
M^ould seem to be the honest way of using our surplus income and 
revenue. 

The report of the late Secretary of the Treasury, Mr. Windom, 
sent to this House at our meeting last December, shows what has 
been done in the use of the surplus. He says : 

The total amount of 4 and 4| per cent bonds purchased and redeemed since 
March 4, 1889, is $211,833,450, and the amount expended therefor is |246,620,- 
741.73. The reduction in the annual interest charge by reason of these trans- 
actions is $8,967,609.75, and the total saving of interest is $51,576,706.01. 

And there have been redeemed and paid bonds to the amount of 
895,000,000 since the first of last December. I submit a statement of 
the amount which will be refunded to the States and Territories 
under this bill, as follows : 

Amount col- 
STATE3 AND TERRITORIES. lectecl and to 

be refunded. 

Iowa $384,374 80 

Kansas 60,981 83 

Kentucky 606,641 03 

Louisiana 385,886 67 

Maine 357,703 10 

Maryland 371,399 83 

Massachusetts 700,894 14 

Michigan 436,498 83 

Minnesota 93,245 00 

Mississippi 113,324 66 

Missouri 646,958 23 

Nebraska 19,313 00 



Amount col- 
States and Territories. lected and to 

be refunded. 

Alabama $23,520 24 

Arkansas 154,701 18 

California 222,955 41 

Colorado 23,189 96 

Connecticut 261,981 90 

Dakota 3,241 33 

Delaware 70,332 83 

District of Columbia 49,437 33 

Florida 4,766 26 

Georgia 117,982 89 

Illinois 974,568 63 

Indiana 769,144 03 



THE DIRECT-TAX REFUNDING BILL. 



501 



Amount col- 
States and Territories. lected and to 

be refunded. 

Nevada $3,903 77 

New Hampshire 185,645 67 

New Jersey 382,614 83 

New Mexico 62,648 00 

New York 2,213,330 86 

North Carolina 377,452 61 

Ohio 1,332,025 93 

Oregon 29,869 57 

Pennsylvania 1,654,711 43 

Rhode Island 99,419 11 



States and Territories. 

South Carolina 

Tennessee 

Texas 

Vermont 

Virginia 

West Virginia 

Washington 

Wisconsin 



Amount col- 
lected and to 
be refunded. 

§222,396 36 

392,004 48 

180,841 51 

179.407 80 

442.408 09 
181,306 93 

4,268 16 
446,535 41 



Total $15,227,632 03 



now ask for a vote on the passage of this order. 



THE HAWAIIAN TREATY. 

Speech in the House of Eepresentatiyes, Fifty-first 
Congress, February 28, 1891. 

[From the Congressional RecorcLI 

The House havinc: under consideration the bill [H. R. 12,333] relating to the 
treaty of reciprocity with the Hawaiian Islands, Mr. McKinley said — 

Mr. Speaker : The only purpose of this resolution is to make 
certain that nothing in the tariff act of 1890 shall be held to impair 
the treaty which the United States has with the Hawaiian Islands. 
In the bill which passed this House, as already stated by the gentle- 
man from Arkansas [Mr. Breckinridge], there was a distinct provi- ^ 
sion excepting all treaties from the operation of that tariff act. That 
Avas put there, out of abundance of caution, to save all our treaties. 
It had been in the act of 1883, and had been in prior tariff acts. And 
so it went through this House. It went to the Senate, and the Finance 
Committee of the Senate struck it out. The Senate itself subsequently 
concurred in the action of the Finance Committee, and when we got 
into conference it was one of the points of disagreement between the 
two Houses. And I say here, to the members of this House, that 
in that Conference, since it is public now — and it was made public 
the other day by Senators who were members of the Committee — 
that I insisted on the part of the House that that provision should 
stand in the bill. There was a question raised as to the necessity of 
having any such provision in the bill at all. It was believed by gen- 
tlemen who were in that Conference that it was wholly unnecessary 
for the preservation of the treaty that any such provision should be 
inserted in the law. Aside from that contention, I am sure no mem- 
ber of the Conference Committee and no member of either House 
desired the annulment of the treaty by a tariff bill ; whatever may 
have been their opinion of the treaty itself, no one wanted it impaired 
through the revenue legislation of 1890. 



THE HAWAIIAN TREATY, 5O3 

Mr. Breckinridge. Is the gentleman from Ohio informed as to how the 
Treasury Department construes the tariff bill of 1890 in respect to these treaty 
provisions ? 

I can only say to the gentleman from Arkansas that at the time I 
introduced the resolution, or about that time, in a conversation I had 
with the late Secretary Windom, he requested with a great deal of 
urgency that we should pass this bill at once; that he would be 
brought soon to consider the question whether he would collect the 
duties imposed upon certain articles which were free by the treaty 
and made dutiable by the tariff law of 1890, saying that he did not 
see how he could avoid enforcing the duties as fixed by the law of 
1890. He Avas exceedingly anxious to be saved from embarrassment, 
and to avoid any act which might be held as a violation of the treaty. 
That is all the information I have in respect to that subject. What 
course he took I am not advised. 

Mr. CoLEMAX. What benefit does this country get by the terms of the treaty 
in consideration of having sugar and rice come in free ? 

Among other things I will say, in response to the gentleman from 
Louisiana, we get the Pearl Kiver harbor concession. Article II of 
the treaty is as follows : 

His Majesty the King of the Hawaiian Islands grants to the Government of 
the United States the exclusive right to enter the harbor of Pearl River, in the 
Island of Oahu, and to establish and maintain there a coaling and repair station 
for the use of vessels of the United States; and to that end the United States may 
improve the entrance to said harbor, and do all other things needful to the pur- 
pose aforesaid. 

But we get another thing, which in my judgment is of equal if 
not greater importance than even the Pearl Eiver concession. We 
have this provision in the treaty : 

It is agreed on the part of his Hawaiian Majesty that, so long as this treaty 
shall remain in force, he will not lease or otherwise dispose of or create any lien 
upon any port, harbor, or other territory in his domain, or make any special privi- 
lege of right of use therefor to any other power, state, or government ; nor make 
any treaty by which any other nation shall obtain the same privileges, relative to 
the admission of any articles free of duty, hereby secured to the United States. 

Now, in addition to the Pearl Eiver harbor, we have that conces- 
sion from the King of the Hawaiian Islands— a most important con- 
cession — that he will not lease, grant, or give rights to any power in 
any port or territory of his Majesty ; nor will he give to any other 
state or country the same privileges or concessions as to duties and 



504 SPEECHES AND ADDRESSES OF WILLIAM McKINLEY. 

articles imported free that he has given under this treaty to the Gov- 
ernment of the United States. The excess of our imj^orts over our 
exports largely grows out of the free admission of sugar. That was 
the concession given to the Hawaiian Islands. It was an exclusive 
privilege, but it is no longer so. Now, gentlemen say that it was a 
very bad bargain. Well, it may or it may not have been a bad bar- 
gain at the beginning, but that can not be said of it now, since sugar 
is made free to every other country in the world, and the islands enjoy 
no exclusive privileges in this respect. But, good or bad, it was a 
treaty, made by a Republican administration and extended by the 
administration of President Cleveland in 1887 for seven years, and 
must be faithfully and honorably kept by the United States. 

I beg to call the attention of the House to the fact that the only 
articles that are made dutiable by the tariff law of 1890, which are 
free under the treaty with the Hawaiian Islands, are castor oil, nuts, 
vegetables, dried and undried, preserved and unpreserved, rice-seeds, 
plants, shrubs, trees, and tallow. They are the only articles affected 
by the tariff law which are free under the treaty between the United 
States and the Hawaiian Islands ; and last year, upon the importation 
of those articles the duties would have amounted to about $150,000. 
That is to say, we are giving up from $150,000 to §200,000 annually 
for the privilege of the Pearl River harbor and the other concessions 
to which I have called the attention of this House. 

Mr. Cobb. I understood you to admit that in your opinion this treaty was 
repealed. 

I did not admit that the treaty was repealed. I did say, in answer 
to the gentleman from Georgia [Mr. Turner], who put the inquiry to 
me, that in my judgment the treaty might be affected as to these 
articles which were free under the treaty, and which were made duti- 
able by the act of 1890. At all events, that is the contention, and if 
you followed the report which I made you will see I only stated that 
it was claimed in certain quarters that it might abrogate the treaty to 
that extent. It is to save any question and remove all doubt that I 
have reported this resolution. 

Mr. Breckinridge, of Kentucky. Will the gentleman permit me to suggest, 
if we have done anything which violates the treaty, if the other party accepts the 
violation and sets it aside, if we through Congress declare that we did not mean 
it, and that declaration is accepted by the other party, what harm is donef 

None whatever. That is the point which I was about to make. 
If this satisfies the other contracting party, then we ought to be will- 



THE HAWAIIAN TREATY. 505 

ing to give it. It preserves our own honor, and disclaims any jjurpose 
to violate the sacred obligations of our treaty. 

Mr. Cobb. Will the gentleman allow me to prosecute the matter to which I 
wished to call his attention ? If the treaty has been repealed, then all the obliga- 
tions hitherto resting upon this Hawaiian Government haA'e been removed from 
them and they are under no further obligation to us. Is not that the fact ? 

I hope they do not feel that way. I do not think they do. At all 
events, by the passage of this bill we keep our own obligations. 

Mr. Cobb. That would be the effect in law, would it not ? 

The gentleman knows as well as I do what the effect in law would 
be. By Article I of the treaty the following products of the Hawaiian 
Kingdom were accorded exemption from customs duties on entering 
the United States : 

Arrowroot; castor oil; bananas: nuts; vegetables, dried and undried, pre- 
served and unpreserved; hides and skins undressed; rice; pulu; seeds; plants; 
shrubs, or trees ; muscovado, brown, and all other unrefined sugar, meaning 
hereby the grades of sugar heretofore commonly imported from the Hawaiian 
Islands, and now known in the markets of San Francisco and Portland as " Sand- 
wich Islands sugar '' ; sirups of sugar-cane, melado, and molasses ; tallow. 

And by Article XI a large and valuable schedule of products and 
manufactures of the United States to be admitted duty free into the 
kingdom of Hawaii is stipulated, as follows : 

Agricultural imy)lements; animals; beef, bacon, pork, ham, and all fresh, 
smoked, or preserved meats ; boots and shoes ; grain, flour, meal and bran, bread 
and breadstutfs, of all kinds; bricks, lime, and cement; butter, cheese, lard, tal- 
low ; bullion ; coal ; cordage ; naval stores, including tar, pitch, resin, turpentine, 
raw and rectified ; copper and composition sheathing ; nails and bolts ; cotton 
and manufactures of cotton, bleached and unbleached, and whether or not col- 
ored, stained, painted, or printed ; eggs ; fish and oysters, and all other creatures 
living in the water, and the products thereof ; fruits, nuts, and vegetables, green, 
dried, or undried, preserved or unpreserved : hardware ; hides ; furs, skins, and 
pelts, dressed or undressed ; hoop ii'on and rivets, nails, spikes, and bolts, tacks, 
brads, or sprigs ; ice ; iron and steel and manufactures thereof ; leather ; lumber 
and timber of all kinds, round, hewed, sawed, and unmanufactured in whole or in 
part; doors, sashes, and blinds; machinery of all kinds, engines and parts thereof ; 
oats and hay; paper, stationery, and books, and all manufactures of paper or of 
paper and wood ; petroleum, and all oils for lubricating or illuminating purposes ; 
plants, shrubs, trees, and seeds ; rice ; sugar, refined or unrefined ; salt ; soap ; 
shooks, staves, and headings ; wool, and manufactures of wool, other than ready- 
made clothing; wagons and carts for the purposes of agriculture or of drayage; 
wood and manufactures of wood, or of wood and metal, except furniture, either 
upholstered or carved, and carriages; textile manufactures, made of a combination 



506 SPEECHES AND ADDRESSES OF WILLIAM McKINLEY. 

of wool, cotton, silk, or linen, or of any two or more of them, other than when 
ready-made clothing; harness and all manufactures of leather; starch; and to- 
bacco, whether in leaf or manufactured. 

Mr. Speaker, the only thing we can do, and the only thing we 
undertake to do, is to say that by the tariff act of 1890 we did not 
mean to impair any part of the treaty. That was the understanding 
of the majority of the Committee of Conference. That is all we can 
say, and that is all we propose under this resolution. Good faith re- 
quires us to pass it, independent and above every other consideration. 
We must keep our treaty stipulations, whether good or bad, and there 
are few, indeed, wdio do not hold that this is a valuable treaty commer- 
cially and politically. IMy interest in this matter has been to pre- 
serve the good faith of the Government, and this resolution is intended 
to show that the tariff law should not disturb that treaty. [Cries of 
" Vote ! " " Vote ! "] 



THE TRIBUNE'S JUBILEE. 

Response to Toast, " The Teibuxe and the Cause of Ameri- 
can Protection," Fiftieth Anniversary of the Founding 
OF THE Tribune, Metropolitan Opera House, New York 
City, April 10, 1891. 

[From the New York Tribune.] 

Mr. President, Ladies, and Gentlemen : I am glad to join in 
the observance of the fiftieth anniversary of the New York Tribune. 
Its record is worthy of this great demonstration. It has had a career 
of snccess, of usefulness, and of power, enjoyed by few, if any, of its 
contemporaries. It has been a veritable tribune of the people — has 
fought their battles, and sustained with force and courage their cause, 
which was the cause of freedom and humanity. Its discussion of pub- 
lic questions has been fair and fearless — just to its adversaries and 
faithful to its friends. [Cheers.] It has in a marked degree shaped 
and molded public opinion, and made its impress upon public policies 
and public law for half a century. It has instructed boy and man to 
right political thought, influenced statesmen, scholars. Presidents, and 
Cabinets, for it has always been upon the side of good morals, good 
citizenship, and good government. [Cheers.] It will not be expected, 
in the few moments allotted to me, that I can enter upon any extended 
discussion of the subject assigned to me — that of the tariff. Indeed, 
I should have preferred, had I been left free, to have occupied my 
brief time in reminiscence and congratulation, rather than in the 
serious task of presenting an economic question, although of great 
public interest at this time, and perhaps more than any other for the 
moment claiming public attention. The tariff is now one of the 
chief questions of party division, and represents two schools of polit- 
ical thought, which have divided the people more or less sharply from 
the beginning of the Government. The one holds to the doctrine of 
a revenue tariff and the other to a protective tariff, as the best agency 
33 



508 SPEECHES AND ADDRESSES OP WILLIAM McKINLEY. 

to provide the Government with needed revenue. Both have found 
expression in our public statutes. Protective-tariS hiws extend over 
a longer period of our National life than revenue-tariff laws. Both 
have been tried by the severest test, that of experience — the one dur- 
ing fifty-four years and the other during forty-seven years of our 
history. 

The revenue-tarifE advocate can find no encouragement or support 
in the experience of our own country under his system ; the protec- 
tionist can find nowhere stronger argument and support for his sys- 
tem than the one furnished by our experience and history. [Cheers.] 
The late distinguished editor and founder of the Tribune, whose 
name lends luster to this anniversary, in 18G9 summarized in a strik- 
ing manner these great lessons of history. It has never been better 
done. Let me read : 

Our years of signal disaster and depression have been those in which our 
ports were most easily flooded with foreign goods ; those which intervened be- 
tween the recognition of our independence and the enactment of the tariff of 
1789 ; those which followed the close of our last war with Great Britain, and 
were signalized by immense importations of her fabrics ; those of 1837-42, when 
the compromise of 1833 began to be seriously felt in the reduction of duties on 
imports ; and those of 1854-'57, when the Polk-Walker tariff of 1846 had had time 
to take full effect. 

No similarly sweeping revulsions and prostrations ever took place 
— I think none could take place — under the sway of efiicient j^rotec- 
tion. Mr. Clay, in 1832, after premising that the seven years pre- 
ceding the passage of the tariff of 1824 had been the most disastrous, 
while the seven following the passage of the act had been the most 
jirosperous that our country had ever known, said : 

This transformation of the condition of the country, from gloom and distress 
to brightness and prosperity, has been mainly the work of American legislation, 
fostering American industry, instead of allowing it to be controlled by foreign 
legislation, cherishing foreign industry. 

This is the testimony of history, and can not be controverted. 
The progress of the country since 1861 in industrial development and 
National advancement makes the historical argument even stronger 
and more conclusive than the periods of which Mr. Greeley spoke. 
The whole subject is one of practical business, of National and in- 
dividual well-being. [Applause.] Which tariff system will best pro- 
vide the public revenues with the least burden upon the people, and, 
while doing this, will promote rather than retard the welfare of the 
people and the prosperity of the country ? 



THE TRIBUNE JUBILEE. 509 

Either system will raise the required revenue for the Goyernment, 
if proj^erly applied. A revenue tariff will do this, for the time at 
least ; a protective tariff has demonstrated what it can do in that 
direction in the last thirty years. But while a revenue tariff can 
secure needed revenue, it can do nothing else. It proposes to do 
nothing else. It seeks to do nothing else. It is unmindful of every- 
thing else. It takes no thought of our industrial independence, of 
the employments of our people, of the wages of our labor, of a home 
market for our agriculturists, and, while professing to be the friend 
of the consumer, it is his concealed foe. 

Its sole purpose is to promote importations that it may increase 
the revenue. It has no other object but to raise revenue, and only 
revenue; when that is done its mission is ended. Its duties must in 
no case favor the domestic producer. If they do, they are protective, 
and to that extent are condemned by the revenue reformer, as a re- 
straint upon foreign importations and free commercial exchanges and 
a check upon the revenue. It singles out, first, as subjects for taxation, 
those articles of foreign produce and manufacture of the soil or shop 
which we can not produce, and upon them imposes its tax or duty. If 
it taxes a foreign competing product it must make its tax or tariff 
so low as to discourage domestic and encourage foreign production, 
otherwise it would fail of its purpose. Low tariffs require the largest 
importations to secure needed revenue. Their effect is to stimulate 
foreign manufactures and foreign productions, stifle home manufac- 
tures and home productions, and increase the demand for foreign 
labor by narrowing the opportunities of American labor. A revenue 
tariff is always paid by the consumer, for which the consumer gets no 
compensation. [Applause.] 

A protective tariff places all articles of foreign production and 
manufacture which we can not produce in this country, except luxu- 
ries, on the free list, without tariff or tax. Luxuries are taxed, and 
heavily taxed, under the protective system, but necessities are never 
taxed. So, in 1872, in pursuance of this principle, tea and coffee, 
which had theretofore been taxed for revenue purposes, as an emer- 
gency of the war, were admitted without customhouse charge to our 
ports and our people ; and so in 1890, when the time had come that 
the revenue could be spared, the protective party, following the prin- 
ciple I have announced, removed the tariff from sugar [cheers], be- 
cause after a hundred years of experience we had demonstrated that 
we were able to produce but eight per cent of what we consumed. 
And by the same law we put those fibers and drugs which we are not 



510 SPEECHES AND ADDRESSES OF WILLIAM McKINLEY. 

capable of growing also upon the free list. The protective principle 
imposes its tariffs upon foreign products which compete with the prod- 
ucts of our own land and labor, of our own mines and manufactories. 
It does not make its tax prohibitory ; it never has, and it never will. 
[Applause.] It makes the foreign product coming to the United 
States in competition with ours bear the duty, and, while supplying 
the needed revenue, discriminates in favor of our own producers and 
our own productions. [Applause.] 

As a tariff has to be levied to raise revenue, we believe it better 
that it should be levied on the foreign products which compete with 
those produced by our own people, and to that extent protect our own 
producers, our own labor, and defend them reasonably and fairly in 
their own market. The result of this system of tariff has so quick- 
ened the energies of our people, so stimulated jiroduction and de- 
velopment, as to make us the greatest agricultural- and mining and 
manufacturing Nation of the world. It has diversified our industries, 
given to the farmer the best market and to labor the best wages any- 
where to be found, and the consumers better products, at lower prices, 
than they ever before enjoyed. [Applause.] Under it we have had 
a larger foreign trade than in any revenue-tariff period of our history. 
Our exportations have exceeded our importations ; our inland trade 
and commerce have grown to an extent as surprising to us as to the 
nations of the world. [Applause.] I can not better present another 
view of this question than by bringing to your attention a quotation 
from Mr. Greeley. It is specially apt now, when free-trade writers 
are seeking to create antagonism between the farmers and manufac- 
turers. He wrote : 

It seems to me self-evident that protection tends to shorten the distance be- 
tween the farmer and the artisan or manufacturer, hence to diminish the cost of 
exchanging their respective products, and thus to secure to the farmer not only 
surer and steadier markets for his produce, but an ampler recompense for his 
labors. Such are the conclusions that long ago made me a protectionist. Dis- 
tant markets are all but inevitably inconstant, uncertain markets. Europe has 
deficient harvests one year and buys grain of us quite freely, but next year her 
harvests are bounteous, and she requires very little more food than she produces, 
no matter how freely we may be buying of her fabrics. Hence our wheat now 
sells very far below the prices which ruled here when Europe had a meager har- 
vest. A remote market virtually restricts the farmer to two or three great 
staples, while near markets enable him to diversify his products and thus main- 
tain and increase the productive capacity of the soil. [Cheers.] 

These words are as true as they were twenty-two years ago, when 
the great author penned them, and they have never been successfully 



THE TRIBUNE JUBILEE. 511 

answered. [Cheers.] They come now with peculiar force to repel 
the free-trade argument that the farmer is being robbed by the 
tariff. 

The new tariff law puts no fetters on trade, but removes such as 
were no longer required for our own defense and the needs of the 
Treasury. It gives us wider, freer trade, regardful of our own inter- 
ests and occupations, than we ever before enjoyed under any tariff 
law. It makes reciprocity possible, which has heretofore been next 
to impossible, and under the provisions of the new law and within 
four months of its passage, President Harrison and his illustrious 
Secretary of State [Mr. Blaine] have concluded a treaty with Brazil, 
valuable to our country in the extension of its trade. [Cheers.] We 
have opened up another avenue to the world's markets, regarded by 
some as better than our home markets (in which view I do not con- 
cur), by giving the American manufacturer "free raw material" for 
the export trade. Under this provision, any citizen of this country 
can import any material he pleases, pay the duty fixed by law, take it 
out and manufacture it into the finished product, bring it back to the 
customhouse and enter it for the foreign market, and the Govern- 
ment refunds him ninety-nine per cent of the duty paid on the im- 
ported material — within one per cent of free trade. It makes all 
materials of foreign production for shijibuilding to be used in the 
foreign trade free. It has no prohibition in it, except that it pro- 
hibits the importation of obscene literature, lewd pictures, debasing 
images, figures, and everything else of an immoral nature. It pro- 
hibits the landing in this country of the products of the prison labor 
of other countries to compete with the free labor of this ; and in the 
interest of our own producers it prohibits the Government from im- 
porting any foreign article except upon the terms exacted of its own 
citizens. Under this law the Government can not go abroad and buy 
what it can get at home without paying the duty. The result will 
be that the Government hereafter will buy more at home and less 
abroad — and it ought to. [Applause.] 

The misrepresentations of the new law by certain papers and 
orators have been so serious and persistent that many good people 
have been prejudiced against it. It is true that experience is fast 
removing that prejudice, and it will do still more in that way as time 
goes on and the law makes its own demonstration. The course of the 
free-trade journals of the country toward it is not novel in our his- 
tory. They have never failed to make similar misrepresentations 
and false prophecies when a new protective law was substituted or 



512 SPEECHES AND ADDRESSES OF WILLIAM McKINLEY. 

passed. These critics and reviewers are as old as the tariff, and 
will doubtless be with us while tariffs last. For example, here is an 
editorial of a New York evening journal of February 3, 1824, written 
after the Committee of the House of Eepresentatives had reported 
the protective tariff law of 1824. Let me read it : 

Pass the tariff, as reported by the Committee, and you palsy the Nation. Pass 
it, and where will you any longer find occupants for your costly piles of stores 
and dwelling houses ? Pass it, and who will be exempt from its grinding opera- 
tions? The poorer classes, especially, must feel its effects, in paying an additional 
price for every article of clothing they and their families wear, and every mouth- 
ful they eat or drink, save cold water ; and to that will they ere long be reduced. 
[Laughter.] 

What a familiar tone this has ! [Laughter and applause.] How 
like the editorials of the same paper written in October and Novem- 
ber, 1890 ; and yet this was written sixty-seven years ago ! When I 
saw it for the first time a few days ago, it read for all the world like 
the one I had seen in the same paper last year, the day following my 
report of the new tariff bill. [Laughter.] None of these awful 
prophecies were fulfilled ; none of these dire results ensued. The 
Nation was not palsied, but quickened into new life. Your merchants 
did not move out of their costly piles of stores and dwelling houses ; 
they remained, only to require larger and finer and more costly ones ; 
the poorer classes were not driven to cold water as their only food 
and diet, but their labor was in greater demand and their wages ad- 
vanced in price. This city, this State, and the entire country, under 
that tariff moved on to higher triumphs in industrial progress, and 
to a higher and better destiny for all its people. 

History seems to be repeating itself. The predictions of 1890 are 
already proving as fatal to the tariff prophets as those of 1824. [Ap- 
plause.] Prosperity has silenced false prophecy. Trade and experi- 
ence have been dispelling its omens of evil. The show windows have 
already contradicted the free-trade writer, and forced him to revise 
his figures. The advertising columns controvert the editorial col- 
umns ; the merchant's daily price lists have impeached the false testi- 
mony of the free-trade orator, and the false philosophy of the free- 
trade professor. [Applause.] May I not be pardoned for suggesting 
that hereafter these statements shall be accepted not as carrying ab- 
solute verity, but received with doubt and suspicion until confirmed 
by events and experience ? This will be safest, and will insure the 
people against deception. 

Protection never had an abler advocate and defender than Horace 



THE TRIBUNE JUBILEE. 51 



o 



Greeley. [Applause.] His work on Political Economy, published 
in 1870, is as clear an exposition of tlie whole economic subject as 
any work published before or since. It is within the comprehension 
of all — so plain and lucid and simple that the commonest mind can 
grasp and understand it. His debate with Samuel J. Tilden was a 
valuable contribution to this vexed subject ; while his daily contribu- 
tions to his paj^er, always forceful and logical, had much to do with 
dispelling free-trade theories and making and keeping public senti- 
ment in favor of the American system. Since that great American 
editor laid down his pen the paper has under its present able manage- 
ment never deviated in its devotion to the protective cause that was 
so near and dear to its founder. [Applause.] Mr. Greeley, if alive, 
would share in the pride we all take in his pupil and successor, the 
gifted Whitelaw Reid, who has not only maintained the prestige of 
the Tribune, but who, in the field of diplomacy, has proved a worthy 
successor to Jefferson, Piuckney, Cass, "Washburne, Noyes, and Mor- 
ton. Its support to the great cause was never weak nor wavering. 
It has struck hard blows for the system. It has fought a hard fight 
in a city whose sentiment was more frequently adverse than friendly, 
and whose press, with few exceptions, was fighting on the side of free 
trade. [Cheers.] 

I congratulate the Tribune and its managers that upon the pro- 
tective issue it never failed to win a victory. [Applause.] During 
the whole of its half-century of life, when the question of a protective 
tariff or a revenue tariff has been distinctly before the American 
people, the people were with it, and their verdict was in favor of the 
American and against the British system. [Applause.] Nor can we 
doubt that it will be so in the years of the future. The issue may 
be blinded by other considerations, it may be subordinated for a time 
to other questions, but when once and clearly presented, the plain 
people, whose interests and industries are involved, whose wages and 
occupations are affected, can not be induced to vote against them- 
selves, against the interests of their families and fellow-citizens, and 
in opposition to the progress and glory of the Republic. I have an 
abiding faith in the justice of the people. Mr. Greeley's prophetic 
words are full of truth and courage and hope, and we can well adopt 
them now. On December 1, 18G9, he wrote : 

We are about to enter as a people upon a very general and earnest discus- 
sion of economic questions, and I rejoice that such is the case. I welcome the 
conflict, for I feel entirely assured as to the ultimate issue. Bull Runs and 
Chickamaugas may intervene, but I look beyond them to our Atlanta and our 



514: SPEECHES AND ADDRESSES OP WILLIAM McKINLEY. 

Appomattox. [Applause.] Industry has its campaigns and its battlefields, and 
is not yet beyond the need of intrenchments and fortifications. God grant us 
the wisdom and virtue to press forward on the shining path thus opened plainly 
before us, to the end that our labor may be fully employed and fairly recom- 
pensed, and that age after age may witness the rapid yet substantial progress and 
growth of our people in all the arts of peace, all the elements of National well- 
being ! 

I congratulate the Tribune to-night. Whether it faces the past 
or whetlier it faces the future, it can do it with pride and exultation. 
[Great cheering.] 



PENSIONS AND THE PUBLIC DEBT. 

Address before Canton Post, No. 25, G. A. R., at Canton, 

Ohio, May 30, 1891. 

Mr. President, Comrades of the Grand Army of the Re- 
public, AND MY Fellow-Citizens : I wish I was able to speak fit- 
ting words on this Memorial Day — words of appropriate eulogy for 
the honored dead, whose deeds of valor we recall — words appropriate 
to the living, who have in keeping these sacred recollections of the 
past, who hold in trust for the present, and for those who shall come 
after, the great and inestimable work they did. The dead are be- 
yond our praise or blame. Our words can bring to them neither 
good nor evil ; but what they did and what we say of them in commen- 
dation of their services and sacrifices, freely offered in a righteous 
cause, must do us good. If no words were spoken, if no songs were 
sung, the silent service at the cemetery alone would do us good. 
The story of their heroism and devotion to country, of their unselfish 
patriotism, must make us better men, better citizens, better Ameri- 
cans ; must imbue us with a higher appreciation of the privileges and 
liberties we enjoy under the Government which they saved. 

The American people love peace. They deprecate war. They 
have cultivated the friendliest relations with each other and with the 
peoples of the world. They have never gone to war for continent or 
commerce, territory or trade. They have endeavored in the strictest 
sense to attend to their own business, never intruding themselves into 
the affairs of other nations, and permitting no foreign nation to in- 
trude itself into their affairs. It was reported in the public press, a 
few days ago, that the Secretary of State [Mr. Blaine], on March 27th, 
last, thus spoke to the representative of a great power at Washington : 

I do not recognize the right of any Government to tell the United States 
what it should do. We have never received orders from any foreign power, and 
will not begin now. 

This has been the National sentiment ever since we have been a 



516 SPEECHES AND ADDRESSES OF WILLIAM McKINLEY. 

Government, and will continue so to be as long as the Government 
lasts. We are not seeking a quarrel with any nation, but we do not 
permit, and never have permitted, any nation to dictate to us, or de- 
termine our domestic or foreign policy. We are not and never have 
been a military people. We have been too busy and too practical to 
carry arms in time of peace. War with us has always been a means of 
conquering an honorable peace, and has never been resorted to until 
everything else short of a surrender of principle and essential rights 
failed to bring peace. Only sixteen out of a period of one hundred 
and sixteen years, which includes the eight years' war for our inde- 
pendence, have we been engaged in actual warfare, and then only in 
defense of our rights and liberties against a foreign enemy, and to 
preserve peace and an indivisible union within our own borders. 

Nor are we prepared for war, in the European sense of having a 

. powerful standing army and a great navy, although within a few years 
we have increased our naval strength, and are now engaged in build- 
ing a number of first-class ships of modern design which will rival 
the best of the world. But as contrasted with many other nations 
we are without ships and armament, without fortifications and coast 
defense. As viewed from a strictly military standpoint, therefore, we 
would be called almost defenseless on land and sea. And yet we are 
not defenseless. No nation is defenseless with such resources as we 
possess. Besides, we have demonstrated in every war in which we 
have been engaged our readiness and adaptation for any emergency — 
our inherent and almost resistless strength, founded upon a sincere 
affection for our country and her institutions ; and so long as that 
lasts we need fear no foe from any quarter. Our best endeavor should 
be to encourage and promote this love of country among the people, 
which is the very firmament of our power in war and peace. 

p -"' Our Civil War was a demonstration of what a people dedicated to 
peace and the pursuits of peace can accomplish when freedom and 
country and home and love of all inspire the masses. To hearts 
moved by the love of liberty, military discipline comes quickly ; to 
hands ready to use them, arms are promptly forthcoming. With the 
will there came the way, and as if by magic a mighty and irresistible 
army was raised and equipped. Within forty-eight hours from the 
receipt of President Lincoln's telegraphic call, two Ohio regiments 
were on their way to save the National Capital, and many, many 
more were ready, whose services were not needed. 

Before the War for Independence, and when resistance to British 
oppression had been determined upon, William Williams, of Connecti- 



PENSIONS AND THE PUBLIC DEBT. 517 

cut, a signer of the Declaration of Independence, significantly said, 
" Our blood is more at their service than our liberties." This was 
the spirit of the Revolutionary fathers ; and it was the same senti- 
ment that moved the great North, and which resulted in the muster 
of her matchless Volunteer Army. It was not composed of soldiers 
of fortune ; it was not marshaled for territorial conquest and confis- 
cation ; not for destruction, except as destruction was necessary to the 
salvation of the Union ; not in anger and malice was the mighty North 
moved to war. Any offers of peace, honorable among members of 
the same political family, would have been cheerfully accepted ; indeed, 
they were warmly invited. It is somewhere told that when Harold, of 
England, received a messenger from his brother, with whom he was at 
variance, to inquire on what terms reconciliation and peace could be 
effected between the brothers, he replied in these generous words : 
" The terms I offer are the affection of a brother and the earldom of 
Northumberland." "And," said the envoy as he marched up the 
hall amid the warriors who graced the state of the king, " if Yoste, 
thy brother, agree to this, what terms will you allow to his ally and 
friend, Hadrada, the Giant ? " " AVe will allow to Hadrada, the 
Giant," said Harold, " seven feet of English ground ; and if he be, 
as they say, a giant, some few inches more." 

Harold's attitude toward his brother illustrates the sjairit of the 
North to our misguided brethren of the South before the war and 
during its progress. Any concession to save the Union which did 
not involve the extension of slavery, which did not require the pro- 
tection of slavery in the name of freedom, would have been accepted. 
This spirit animated Lincoln and Grant, and was shown in the final 
surrender at Appomattox, when Grant, with the affection of a brother, 
returned to Lee his sword, and when subsequently Congress gave uni- 
versal pardon and amnesty to the South. Affection, fraternity, and 
union were the conditions for reconciliation, full equality of the van- 
quished with the victors ; but slavery, the great enemy of the Union 
and freedom, the giant evil and cause of the war, must be buried in 
the sepulchre of the rebellion forever. Neither bounty nor pay nor 
pensions were thought of when the great North offered her best from j 
every walk of life that the Union might be preserved. Native-born 
and adopted citizens were brothers and comrades in the great strug- 
gle. Men of all nationalities mingled their blood in the common 
sacrifice and for the common good. "When the news of the fall of 
Richmond reached Washington, the people assembled in large num- 
bers at the residence of Mr. Seward, Secretary of State. Responding 



518 SPEECHES AND ADDRESSES OP WILLIAM McKINLEY. 

to their call, the great premier said among other things : " I am now 
about writing my foreign dispatches. What shall I tell the King of 
Prussia ? " He answered his own question with this glowing tribute 
to our German fellow-citizens : " I will tell him that the Germans 
have been as faithful to the standard of tlie Union as his excellent 
minister, Baron Gerolt, has been constant in his friendship to the 
United States." Our adopted citizens of every land knew in that 
great contest but one flag, the Flag of the Stars. 

What a mighty army was mustered ! The whole number of men 
in the military and naval service during the Civil War was 2,859,132, 
of which number nearly 200,000 were colored. About 1,400,000 men 
were in actual service ; 93,000 were killed in the field, and 186,000 
died in hospitals and camps. More than 350,000 Union soldiers and 
sailors perished during the war, and presumably the same ghastly 
figures are required to reckon the Confederate loss. In addition, an 
untold number on both sides were more or less disabled for life. 
The wooden leg and armless sleeve, badges of bravery and sacrifice, 
are seen all over the land, and are grim reminders of the fearful 
contest. ^ — 7 

We little appreciate the great sacrifices of that war — its awful cost / 
in blood and treasure. We of to-day but faintly comprehend what 
our soldiers then endured. American history is full of precious ex- 
amples of love of country and of the sublime sacrifice in its behalf. 
But as the Rebellion was the greatest Avar in history, so its victims 
were almost innumerable. To recount its losses in the storm of battle 
and by the greater fatality of wounds, exposure, and disease, is to 
paint in blood the ghastliest picture in the annals of time. Let a 
single example, of the many, of the heroism and self-sacrifice of our 
citizen soldiery suffice : 

Go with me to Andersonville, view its horrors, and then tell me 
the American volunteer soldier, who enlisted under the banner of the 
Union, was sordid — that he was a soldier for greed and gain ! See 
that palisade : it incloses fifteen acres of ground. Within its bor- 
ders are 33,000 Union soldiers. They are without shelter. The 
burning July sun pours down on their unprotected heads. They are 
suffering for food and water ; men are dying by the hundreds every 
day. In this condition there comes a message from the Confederate 
officials saying if they will renounce allegiance to the Union cause 
and enter the Confederate Army they shall be set free, released from 
their palisade of death. A private soldier, sick unto death, only able 
to catch the glad word " freedom," which brought recollections of 



PEXSIOXS AND THE PUBLIC DEBT. 5^9 

home and family, raised himself on his enfeebled arm that he might 
better hear the message. The terms were repeated to him, where- 
upon he said, in a voice scarcely audible, " Comrade, lift me up a 
little and take what you find from my left breast pocket." The com- 
rade quickly complied, and drew forth a little American flag, and as 
the dying man seized it he murmured, " I can die for this flag, but I 
can never fight against it." Tell me that men of such mettle place 
pensions above patriotism ! Tell me that men who were thus willing 
to yield up their lives for their country would loot the Treasury and 
bankrupt the Government which they were willing to give their life- 
^lood to save ! 

There is not a volunteer soldier before me, there is not a volun- 
teer of the Eepublic anywhere, who would exchange his honorable 
record in the service of his country in behalf of freedom and man- 
kind, in behalf of the freest and best Government on the face of 
the earth, for any money consideration. His patriotism is above 
price. It can not be bought. It is not merchandise for barter. It 
is not in the market. I thank God there are some things that money 
can not buy, and patriotism is one of them. 

When the war was over this Government had two great debts. 
One was to its creditors who had loaned their money in its hour of 
necessity, thus expressing confidence in the ultimate victory of the 
Union arms ; the other debt was its obligation to the men who had 
saved it and made it possible to pay its money debt. The one debt 
could be computed ; the other was beyond human computation. I 
well remember, in 1865, to have witnessed that Grand Eeview of the 
Army in Washington on its return march home — the Army of Grant, 
of Sherman, of Sheridan, of Hancock, of Thomas, and of Logan. 
Stretched across the front of the great marble Capitol, which had been 
menaced so often by the Confederate Army and saved as often by 
the Army which was then passing in review, was this inscription : 
" The only debt this Government can never pay is the debt it owes 
the brave men who saved the Nation." And nothing truer was ever 
written, and no patriot would now amend it. 

We were not able to pay the principal of the public debt incurred 
by the war when hostilities ceased. It had reached the enormous sum 
of nearly three thousand millions of dollars. Many thought we never 
could pay it. The Government could do nothing more than to pro- 
vide for the interest on that debt and extend the payment of the princi- 
pal until it had recovered from the waste of war. This it did. So that 
the two great items of debt at the close of the war were the interest 



520 SPEECHES AND ADDRESSES OF WILLIAM McKINLEY. 

to the public creditor and pensions to the soldiers. These two items 
have never been so great in the aggregate as they were in 1867. Let 
me bring to your attention some figures which are both interesting 
and instructive. They show the annual interest paid to bondholders, 
and the annual pensions paid to the soldiers, for a series of years be- 
ginning with 1867 : 

1867. Pensionroll $20,936,000 

1867. Interest on public debt 143,781,000 

Total $164,717,000 

1868. Pensionroll $23,732,000 

1868. Interest on public debt 140,424,000 

Total $164,156,000 

1869. Pensionroll $28,476,000 

1869. Interest on public debt 130,694,000 

Totiil $159,170,000 

1889. Pensionroll $87,024,000 

1889. Interest on public debt 41,000,000 

Total $128,624,000 

1890. Pensionroll $106,936,000 

1890. Interest on public debt 36,000,000 

Total $142,936,000 

1891. Pensionroll $126,000,000 

1891. Interest on public debt 32,100,000 

Total $158,100,000 

1892. Pensionroll $135,000,000 

1892. Interest on public debt 27,000,000 

Total $162,000,000 

We have paid off the greater part of the public debt, and reduced 
the annual interest to 827,000,000, as against $143,781,000 in 1867. 
It will be observed that the two items of pensions and interest on the 
public debt in 1892 are less than the two items were in 1867. The 
Government has almost extinguished its debt to the bondholders, 
stamped out every suggestion of repudiation of that debt, and it pro- 
poses now to keep faith with its other sacred creditors — the soldiers 
and sailors who saved the Nation. The soldiers waited for their pen- 
sions, patiently waited, patriotically waited, while the Government 
was struggling under the mighty burden of money debt incurred by 
the war. Tbey stood firmly for the payment of that debt ; they re- 
sisted every form of repudiation under any guise. They had saved 



PENSIONS AND THE PUBLIC DEBT. 52I 

the country in -war, they helped to keep its financial honor free from 
stain in peace. The great war debt is almost paid. Who shall say 
that the other Government obligation shall not be as sacredly kept ? 
Pensions are less expensive than standing armies, and attest the grati- 
tude of a free and generous people. 

General Grant's farewell address to the armies of the Union on 
June 3, 1865, at the close of the war, pays fitting tribute to his com- 
rades — a tribute every soldier should cherish and every citizen adopt. 
It can not be too often repeated. He said : 

Soldiers of the Armies of the United States : By your patriotic devotion to 
your country in the hour of danger and alarm, and your magnificent fighting, 
bravery, and endurance, you have maintained the supremacy of the Union and 
the Constitution, overthrown all armed opposition to the enforcement of the laws, 
and of the Proclamation forever abolishing slavery — the cause and pretext of the 
Rebellion— and opened the way to the rightful authorities to restore order and 
inaugurate peace on a permanent and enduring basis on every foot of American 
soil. Your marches, sieges, and battles, in distance, duration, resolution, and 
brilliancy of results, dim the luster of the world's past military achievements, 
and will be the patriot's precedent in defense of liberty and right in all time to 
come. In obedience to your country's call, you left your homes and families and 
volunteered in her defense. Victory has crowned your valor and secured the pur- 
pose of your patriotic hearts ; and with the gratitude of your countrymen and 
the highest honors a great and free Nation can accord, you will soon be permitted 
to return to your homes and families, conscious of having discharged the highest 
duty of American citizens. To achieve these glorious triumphs and secure to 
yourselves, your fellow-countrymen, and to posterity, the blessings of free insti- 
tutions, tens of thousands of your gallant comrades have fallen, and sealed the 
priceless legacy with their blood. The graves of these, a grateful Nation bedews 
with tears ; it honors their memories, and will ever eberish and support their 
stricken families. 

Thus spoke the Old Commander to the Veteran Army, nearly 
twenty-six years ago. The great Army he thus addressed is melting 
away. The past twenty-five years have thinned its ranks ; the coming 
years will thin them more rapidly, for the boys are growing old, and 
are less able, day by day, to resist the infirmities incurred in camp 
and prison, bivouac and battle, from 18G1 to 1865. The muster roll 
here is diminishing in number; the muster roll over yonder is in- 
creasing, for it is daily recruiting from the living, while the living 
have no reserve from which to fill their decimated ranks. 

A large part of that vast Army has passed over and beyond, and 
the old and chief commanders have joined the Silent Army in " their 
low, green tents, whose curtains never outward swing." Few of the 
conspicuous leaders yet remain. The roll-call discloses that they are 



522 SPEECHES AND ADDRESSES OP WILLI a:\1 McKINLEY. 

gone — " not present, but accounted for." What a distinguished com- 
pany ! — Lincoln and Grant, Thomas and McPherson, Sedgwick and 
Eeno, Meade and Pojae, McClellan and Hancock, Sheridan and Logan, 
Garfield and Crook ; and the last, the much-beloved Sherman, has 
answered the dread summons since last Memorial Day, and is now, I 
doubt not, with the larger wing of that Army which he led to the sea. 
The circle is narrowing, the numbers diminishing, as every Me- 
morial Day attests, but posterity will emulate the patriotism they dis- 
played in service and sacrifice. It will enjoy undisturbed the victories 
they achieved for freedom and mankind, and will guard with sacred 
vigil the graves of our hero dead forever. 

Rest on, embalmed and sainted dead I 

Dear as the blood ye gave, 
No impiotxs footsteps here shall tread 

The herbage of your grave ; 
Nor shall your story be forgot 

While Fame her record keeps, 
Or Honor points the hallowed spot 

Where Valor proudly sleeps. 



I 






NO COMPEOMISE WITH THE DEMAGOGUE. 

Speech accepting the NoMiNATioisr for Governor at the 
Eepublican State Convention at Columbus, Ohio, June 
17, 1891. 

Mr. Chairman and Gentlemen of the Convention : I 
accept tlie nomination 3'ou have tendered me, sensible both of the 
honor and responsibility it implies. It is a summons of my party to 
duty which I can not disregard and to which I yield cheerful obedi- 
ence. Coming, as it does, freely and heartily and without division, it 
is a manifestation of your confidence which I shall always prize and 
strive to deserve. With your hearty good will and generous assur- 
ances, I take the post you have assigned me, relying ujDon you and 
the constituency behind you for that support and co-operation which 
will crown with victory the work of this day. 

The election this year is of unusual importance, not only because 
it determines the political character of the administration of the 
State for the coming two years, but because it involves the choice of 
a Legislature whose duty it will be to elect a United States Senator, 
who will serve for six years from March 4, 1893, and whose further 
duty it will be to district the State for Representatives in Congress 
under the new census, and wipe from the statute-books the crime 
against Republican suffrage perpetrated by the present Democratic 
Legislature. The contest to which we invite our political opponents 
by this early convention is one of principle, and the administration of 
ideas and policies, and the issues we offer must be fully presented 
and fairly tried before the tribunal of the people. We must meet 
them frankly and discuss them thoroughly. I need not remind you 
that the most efficient organization will be required, and that personal 
activity will be needed all along the line from now until the people's 
verdict shall be finally registered in November. There must be no 
overconfidence or indifference ; earnest and intelligent Avork, individ- 
ual and united, is the demand of the hour and the requirement of duty. 
34 



524 SPEECHES AND ADDRESSES OP WILLIAM McKINLEY. 

Conscious of party integrity, firm in the conviction that our party 
is right, that its principles are best adapted to the wants and welfare 
of the people, we invite the fullest discussion, and, in the end, the 
intelligent and well-considered judgment of the electors of the State. 
"We avoid no issue, we shirk no responsibility, we run away from no 
party doctrine, we apologize for no public measure of our making, 
and are ready to defend our acts against assault from any quarter. 
We do not invoke our past record as our only warrant for the confi- 
dence of the people, although we turn to it with pride and satisfac- 
tion. There is not a page of it Ave would obliterate if we could, nor 
is there a line which any lover of freedom or mankind would strike 
from its glorious pages. Can this be asserted by, or of, any other 
political party ? There has been no lack of courage and patriotism 
and devotion to the people's interests by the party in the past, begin- 
ning with the leadership of Lincoln and Chase, Seward and Wade, 
and continuing to that of Grant and Hayes, Garfield and Arthur, 
Blaine and Harrison ; and there will be none in the future. The 
party has met every emergency, has responded to every call of the 
country, has performed with fidelity every duty with which it was 
charged, and has successfully resisted every enemy of the Government 
and the people, whether that enemy was seeking the Nation's over- 
throw in open war, the violation of its plighted faith, or the destruc- 
tion of its industries. Whether against slavery or repudiation, fiat 
money or free trade, the Republican party has stood firm and im- 
movable for right and country, for freedom and free homes, for the 
public credit, a sound currency, and for the maintenance of our 
industrial independence and the dignity and elevation of American 
labor. Its position upon all these questions has never been doubtful 
or deviating, and in regard to those which are applicable to the present 
situation it will take no backward step. If the party in any of these 
great struggles has lost here and there from its own ranks, it has 
more than supplied such loss from the other party, of its strong and 
conservative men, whose love of country and concern for its financial 
honor and industrial welfare have lifted them above and beyond party 
obligations. The Republican party occupies to-day the most brilliant 
post in the politics of civilization. Its achievements have no parallel ; 
its record is without a rival. It has lost none of its old-time courage 
and decision, and will abate none of its force and fidelity in the strug- 
gle which is now upon us. 

The platform which you have adopted meets my approval. It 
announces with clearness and courage the great cardinal doctrines of 



NO COMPROMISE WITH THE DEMAGOGUE. 525 

the Eepnblican party, while it proclaims the well-considered convic- 
tions of Ohio Republicans touching the newer questions which now 
confront them. It does not narrow, but widens, the field of conten- 
tion. It presents issues both State and National, and covers all the 
differences in both principle and administration between the Republi- 
can and Democratic parties. The Republicans of Ohio approve the 
administration of President Harrison, and extend to him hearty con- 
gratulation. It has been clean, conservative, able, and patriotic. It 
has been wise in its domestic policy, thoroughly American in its for- 
eign. It has won the confidence of the people at home ; it commands 
universal respect abroad. The party is in favor of a regulated immi- 
gration, which shall be just and reasonable and humane. Our shores 
should be made impassable to the vicious, the criminals, and public 
deiDendents of other lands, but not inhospitable to the honest and 
virtuous, and those who are well disposed to our institutions, seeking 
new and happier homes, ready to share the burdens as well as the 
blessings of our society. It demands and will require a strict enforce- 
ment of existing law, and such additional safeguards as will protect 
our citizenship and our labor. It is for liberal pensions to our soldiers 
and sailors, as the legislation of the last and previous Congresses 
faithfully attests. Although defeated temporarily, it has not aban- 
doned the cause of honest elections. The cause survives — the crime 
against popular government continues, and it will not be condoned. 
The Republican party will not relax its vigilance until citizen suffrage 
shall be recognized, and a free ballot and honest elections, the active 
principle of our Grovernment, shall be secured in every part of the 
Republic. 

It can never consent to an irredeemable currency, whether issued 
by State or National authority. It will maintain the public faith and 
the public honor, and its face will be set against a debased coin and a 
depreciated currency now as heretofore. It will not forget the ad- 
monition of Washington, who said, " Cherish the public credit as a 
most important source of our strength and security." It is in favor 
of gold and silver, and also paper money based upon coin, all equal 
and at all times interchangeable ; equal in fact and equal in law. It 
is in favor of a circulating medium large enough to do the vast busi- 
ness of this country ; but insists that that circulating medium, whether 
silver, or paper, or gold, or of all, shall be sound and stable, secure 
from discount, or depreciation, or fluctuation ; not only good among 
ourselves, but wherever trade extends. This has been and is now the 
Republican policy. 



526 SPEECHES AND ADDRESSES OF WILLIAM McKINLEY. 

Experience at home and throughout the world has demonstrated 
that a fluctuating, irredeemable currency falls most injuriously upon 
the laborer and agriculturist of the country. They give the best 
they have — their labor and the products of their labor — and receive 
in payment the worst form of money which passes current. The 
banker and broker, the grain dealer and wool buyer, like the rest of 
mankind, always pay out the poorest money which will circulate and 
retain the best. If there is money of differing values, the best is 
practically taken out of the channels of trade and from commercial 
uses — hoarded by those who can have accumulations — and the circu- 
lating medium is thus contracted, and the country deprived of the 
active use of its best money. This results inevitably in one stand- 
ard, and that the poorest. Do we want that ? The farmer when he 
sells his wheat is required to give a full bushel in measure. He 
should receive, and the buyer should be required to pay him, a full 
dollar in value. This can not be if we have different kinds of legal- 
tender money of unequal value. We do not want short weight or 
short measure to apply to what we buy, nor do those who sell want, 
or should they be required to receive, by the fiat of the Government, 
a short dollar in payment for what they sell. We all buy and all sell 
something — labor, or land, or skill, or products, or merchandise — and 
have an equal and reciprocal interest that our money shall have fixed 
and unvarying standards of value. When the laborer performs a full 
day's work he should receive his pay in dollars of full value. 

There can be no legerdemain in legislation which will secure to 
us money which does not belong to us, or which can provide the 
means to pay our debts. The Government was not ordained for any 
such purpose. It can only give to the citizen the widest opportunity 
of reward for his labor, energy, and investment. It can not supply 
his losses, nor can it loan its taxes to him. It can coin money and 
regulate the value thereof ; it can borrow money when its receipts 
fail to provide the necessary revenue to conduct the Government ; 
but it can not create money without creating a debt chargeable upon 
the people. It can not become the depository of the products of the 
people and advance money thereon, and if it had the power it would 
be unwise and suicidal to do it, and no man who will seriously reflect 
will be of any other opinion. We are confronted by a real danger, 
which prudent men of all parties should seek to avert before it is too 
late. We have reached the point where the ways part : One straight 
and honorable, the other crooked and beset with ills ; the one leading 
away from the well-settled policy of the fathers, which can end only 



NO COMPROMISE WITH THE DEMAGOGUE. 527 

in a revolution of values, the ruin of National and individual credits, 
and financial derangement generally, the other leading by a shining 
path to public safety and financial honor. There is but one path for 
Eepublicans to pursue — only one. It is that which they have always 
pursued ; pursued in the face of threat and danger, denunciation and 
clamor ; to the honor of the country and the good of the people. If 
any man doubts where the path of safety lies, let him recall our own 
financial history ; let him heed the warning of the wise statesman 
Webster, second only to Hamilton in financial wisdom, who said : 

A disordered currency is fatal to industry, frugality, and economy. It fosters 
the spirit of speculation and extravagance. It is the most effectual of inventions 
to fertilize the rich man's fields with the sweat of a poor man's brow. 

The public credit and sound finances must be i^reserved, and 
every scheme to destroy them must be met with courage and intelli- 
gence, and repelled by the mighty force of public opinion. Better^ 
risk defeat, which can be only temporary, than capitulate with the 
demagogue or surrender to dishonesty. The misguided citizen never 
forgives the misguided party. The man who is misled, honestly pur- 
suing the wrong, never forgives his party for being wrong, even though 
for temporary advantage it agrees with him. He does not excuse his 
party, if getting what he wants proves to be what he ought not to 
have had. He respects his party for doing right, even as against his 
judgment, but he has no further use for it if, following his judgment, 
harm and injury come to State and country and business. The Ee- 
publican party never won a battle by truckling ; it never lost one when 
it was honest and courageous. The honest and conservative and well- 
meaning have the largest battalions when they muster under one flag. 

The platform indorses a protective tariff, which has been the 
policy of the Government recognized in its fiscal legislation for more 
than half of its life, and which has brought to the Nation great 
streams of revenue, to meet every National demand, and to the peo- 
ple the highest prosperity and the widest diversity of employment. 
It has for its support the wisdom and practice of the men who 
founded the Republic, and its more than half century of trial con- 
firms their sagacity. Washington spoke true words in his Farewell 
Address when he said : 

That to have revenue there must be taxes ; that no taxes can be devised which 
are not more or less inconvenient and unpleasant ; that the intrinsic embarrass- 
ment inseparable from the selection of the proper objects (which is always a choice 
of difficulties) ought to be a decisive motive for a candid construction of the con- 
duct of the Government in making it. 



528 SPEECHES AND ADDRESSES OP WILLIAM McKINLEY. 

"We welcome the closest analysis of the objects which the new 
tariff law singled out for taxation and the duties it imposed thereon, 
and we ask " a candid construction " of our legislation at the hands 
of the people. We have put duties npon those foreign products 
which come into the United States in competition with the products 
of our own land and labor. Is not that right ? What better means 
are there of raising needed revenues ? Are those not proper objects 
for taxation ? We have protected American products and American 
labor. We have looked after our own. " That is the sum of our 
offense." I can understand why the foreign producer does not like 
it, but I never could understand why an American citizen should be 
unhappy over it. So long as foreign products can be found to tax 
which compete with our own in our market, we propose to tax them 
rather than tax our own ; and where we find foreign products which 
do not compete with home products, except luxuries and those which 
encourage vice, we propose to permit them to come in free, without 
tax or tariff. We prefer to tax the imported rather tliau the domestic 
product. The Democratic party prefers to tax the domestic product 
rather than the imported. It prefers to tax a foreign product the 
like of which we can not produce at home, and the price of which 
the foreigner fixes absolutely to the American consumer — a tax which 
benefits no American interest and which is paid wholly by the Ameri- 
can consumer— rather than to tax the foreign product the like of 
which we do produce at home, although such a tax is a benefit to 
American interests and American labor and is not necessarily, or even 
generally, paid by the American consumer. 

That is the difference between the two parties on this question. 
Their principles of taxation would fall most heavily upon our own 
people, and inure to the benefit of competing foreign countries and 
result in injury to our own. Their tariff legislation would benefit 
every country but our own. Ours would benefit our own without 
being unjust to any other. We follow in our tariff policy the teach- 
ings of Washington and Hamilton, Clay and Webster, Lincoln and 
Garfield. They pursue the fallacies of Cobden and Bright and Cal- 
houn, and the leaders of the late Southern Confederacy. They are 
pledged now to impede, if they can, the prosperity of the country 
until after the next Presidential election. That is their mission this 
year. Business disaster and reverses is the ladder of their hopes. 
Prosperity and contentment among the people bring them sure polit- 
ical defeat. Idle furnaces, dismantled factories, silent mines, unem- 
ployed workmen, general distress, are the sure harbingers of Demo- 



NO COMPROMISE WITH THE DEMAGOGUE. 529 

cratic victory. They are discouraging industrial activity through 
their press and orators, everywhere and every day, and it breaks their 
hearts to see any manifestation of industrial advancement in the 
United States. They sneer at every attempt to establish new fac- 
tories, and would gladly frgwn them down. It is the same sneer and 
frown which have been exhibited toward all our industrial enter- 
prises since 1861. But in spite of them, we now lead the world in 
manufactures, agriculture, and mining, and we will prosper under 
the new law heedless of their false omens and discouraging prophecies. 

Tliey insist that we can not make tin plate. So they said about 
steel rails; so they said about plate glass, and cutlery, and pottery; and 
when \fe take them to the factory and show them that we are making 
tin plate, they assert, with intense pleasure, that we are only making 
" a little." That is true ; but how much should we be making ? That 
we are making any is the surprise, for the protective duty on tin has 
not yet gone into effect, and will not until the first of July. They 
are determined that no new fires shall be started, no new field for the 
employment of labor shall be opened, no increased market for agri- 
culture secured, if they can prevent it. They are so wedded to free 
trade and the British system that they are willing any calamity shall 
happen that will rob protection of its fruits and its blessings. They 
would rather have adversity and " hard times " than to witness any 
further demonstrations of the benefits of protection. They value 
their opinions more than the general good. . Thus I sjjeak of the 
leaders of the Democratic party. The rank and file are not with them 
in sympathy and purpose, and will not help them with their votes. 

Reflect for a moment : there is no section of the country. North 
or South, which is not seeking by every manner of inducement to get 
manufactories established in their midst. They are giving donations, 
they are offering bounties, in some communities they are taxing them- 
selves and burdening their property for the sake of securing indus- 
tries which will employ labor and enlarge their neighborhood mar- 
kets. In the South, the great center of free trade, they are offering 
freedom from taxation for ten and twenty years to those who will bring 
their capital and invest in productive enterprises ; and this by au- 
thority of State law. And while all this work is going on, the lead- 
ers of the Democratic party are proposing to tear down the protective 
tariff and inundate this country with foreign competing jiroducts, to 
displace those which these very manufactories propose to make and 
which the people are taxing themselves to establish. The people 
looking after business, and not politics, are trying to build up and 



530 SPEECHES AND ADDRESSES OF WILl.IAM McKINLEY. 

diversify industries in the villages and cities of our country, while the 
free-trade Democratic leaders are endeavoring to undermine by unre- 
strained competition from abroad what we already have, and are offer- 
ing every form of opposition to the inauguration of new enterprises. 
The people will come to see and understand this, if they do not already, 
and their votes will go where their material interests lie. They will 
not spend their money to build up, and give their votes to pull 

down. 

There is much complaint, particularly in Europe and among free- 
trade theorists at home, about the increased duties under the new 
tariff law. It was framed on the principle I have already announced. 
True, we did advance some duties. It is said that they bear heavily 
upon the farmers. Let us see if the criticism is supported by the facts. 
Thirty-three and one third per cent of the advanced duties are for the 
better protection of the American farmer. Twenty-eight in number 
of the advanced duties are upon wine and spirits, which will hardly 
burden the farmer. Five of the advanced duties are upon tobacco, an 
agricultural product. In the framing of the law most careful consid- 
eration was given to agriculture. No like recognition of this industry 
can be found in any previous tariff legislation. While securing to the 
farmer the home market by increased protection, the law provides a 
reciprocity clause which is intended to extend his foreign market and 
upon terms more favorable than those accorded to competing agri- 
cultural countries. The bill was drafted after the fullest consultation 
with the farmers of the United States. It was made to meet their 
just demands and reasonable requirements, and with a single excep- 
tion their requests were granted. 

The law, while protecting the farmers' products fully and ade- 
quately, has reduced the duties on other products where it could be 
done with safety to home wages and the home market. It is a sig- 
nificant fact that the articles which the farmer most frequently buys 
bear a less tariff than under the law of 1883, and the products which 
he sells bear higher duties than ever before. The following articles, 
amonsf others, have either had the old duties decreased or removed 
altogether : Sugar, leather, boots and shoes, lumber, rice, starch, trace 
chains, hammers, spikes, nails, tacks, needles, wire and wire rods, 
screws, nuts and washers, files, rasps, binding-twine, rope, cordage, 
log chains, iron piping, stove plates, horseshoes, copper and products 
of, lead and products of, nickel and products of, steel rails, structural 
iron, bar iron, hoop iron, sheet iron, wire rope and wire netting, var- 
nishes, turpentine, camphor, and glycerine. 



NO COMPROMISE WITH THE DEMAGOGUE. 531 

There can be no contention as to the needs of the farmer. They 
are, first and foremost, a good home market. That is safely secured 
by the new tariff law. The consumers of the United States, who are 
the best in the world, are made his customers more securely than they 
have ever been before. No legislation can give him abundant crops ; 
thatis with him who plants and the Great Power over all who "giveth 
the increase." Next he wants a foreign market for his surplus prod- 
ucts. That he is assisted in securing, so far as it is possible, by the 
reciprocity provision of the new law, and no part of the law interferes 
with his entering any foreign market with any product of his field or 
forests. Next he wants good money for his products. He does not 
want to exchange his wheat for a clipped dollar, nor his wool for a 
depreciated currency. He now has the very best money in the world, 
thanks to the Republican party. 

I have dwelt at length upon National issues, but the camj^aign 
will not be confined to these alone. It will be broad enough to com- 
prise all State issues, the record of the present State administration 
and the work of the Legislature, which for the past two years has 
been under the control of the Democratic party. All these will re- 
ceive examination at the hands of the people. Whatever of good can 
be found will receive their approval, as it should, and whatever of 
maladministration or bad legislation shall appear will as surely re- 
ceive their condemnation. It must not be forgotten that a legally 
elected Lieutenant Governor was deprived of his seat without a legal 
contest, in disregard of all forms and precedents made and established 
in such cases, and that there was put in his place one who had not 
received a plurality of votes, but who was the minority candidate — a 
result reached by denying to the veterans at the Soldiers' Home and 
the students of the universities of the State the right of suffrage. 
This crime against the franchise should and will be rebuked. The 
Congressional gerrymander was also the work of the present Legis- 
lature. A more unjust and partisan arrangement of the State for 
Congressional purposes was never before conceived or consummated. 
A Republican State having by accident a Democratic Legislature 
was so notoriously manipulated as to give to the Democratic party 
sixteen out of twenty-one Representatives — a deliberate disfranchise- 
ment of more than half of the Republicans of the State. The State 
in 1890 gave a popular majority to the Republicans, and yet the 
Democratic party by its gerrymander secured a two-thirds majority 
of our members in the National House of Representatives. The true 
voice of Ohio is suppressed in the popular branch of Congress, and 



532 SPEECHES AND ADDRESSES OF WILLIAM McKINLEY. 

the voice of the minority instead of the majority will speak and vote 
for the State. 

Economy in the expenditure of the moneys of the State was a 
pledge of the party in power, and this, in common with all pledges, 
has been flagrantly violated. Its record is one of unparalleled ex- 
travagance. For the fiscal year 1890 the general appropriations were 
$3,483,301, which was 8133,000 in excess of the receipts. Governor 
Hoadly's administration cost the State 86,422,858, and the people 
retired him with a single term. The first term of Governor Foraker's 
administration cost 86,399,730. The amount of the appropriations 
of the Democratic Legislature for Governor Campbell's adminis- 
tration was 87,185,205, which is 82,306,597 more than Foster's first 
term, 81,495,532 more than Foster's second term, 8762,247 more than 
Hoadly's administration, 8968,902 more than Foraker's first term, and 
8785,475 more than Foraker's second term. Indeed, it was a most 
fortunate thing that a Republican Congress returned to the States 
the direct tax advanced by them for the prosecution of the war, 
from which Ohio received over 81,300,000. But for this timely in- 
flow into our State Treasury we would have had a deficiency. The 
people of Ohio want not a parsimonious but a wise and economical 
administration of the State government. They demand that ex- 
penses shall be kept within the annual revenue, and that taxation 
shall be diminished rather than increased. They would abolish 
needless offices which annually tend to deplete the Treasury, and 
which perform no good service to the State. They would improve 
the public institutions, and conduct them on business principles and 
not through partisan management. Those institutions in which the 
people have a peculiar interest should receive the most sacred care of 
the State, and ought to be free from politics and scandals, and admin- 
istered with fidelity, economy, and integrity. The State should be 
a model of economy, and furnish an example to its own citizens of 
frugal management and business methods. But I must not further 
interrupt the necessary business of this Convention. Its spirit and 
unity, its numbers and enthusiasm, indicate an interest and purpose 
which are the forerunners of victory. "We have never had a greater 
battle to fight — none where more vital issues affecting all the people 
were involved — none where " the plain people " had greater stake or 
deeper interests. To them and for them the appeal must be made. 
In them we repose our trust. To them we look for victory. 



JULY FOURTH AT WOODSTOCK. 
An Address at Woodstock, Conx., July 4, 1891. 

[From the New York Independent.'] 

Mk. President, and my Fello^v- Citizens : Since 1870 this 
spot has witnessed the celebration of the anniversary of our National 
independence. They have been memorable occasions. It gives me 
peculiar pleasure to meet the people of New England upon this day, 
and upon this ground, and especially is it pleasing to me to respond 
for the first time that I have been able to do so to the many generous 
invitations that I have received from Mr. Bowen, to whom you and 
all of us are indebted for this patriotic assemblage. I have liked 
Henry C. Bowen for a good many things. I have admired him since 
more than forty years ago, when, in the midst of great political agita- 
tion, as a merchant of the city of New York, he said, " Our goods 
are for sale, but not our principles." [Applause.] It was this spirit 
that guided the Revolutionary fathers, and that has won for freedom 
every signal victory since. 

There have been three events in the history of this Republic 
which have marked great epochs in its progress. The first was the 
triumph which resulted in the independence of the Colonies — a 
triumph without a parallel in the history of the world ; a triumph 
for conscience, for the cause of freedom and of mankind ; a triumph 
of the conscience-directed few over the misguided but organized mul- 
titude ; a triumph for free government and free men, which has stood 
the storms of more than a century, and which is stronger to-day than 
ever in the past. Our forefathers were bold and brave men. Why, 
in less than twenty-nine years from our final triumph in that first 
great struggle, and in only about twenty-three years from the forma- 
tion of the Federal Union, the young Republic, believing that its 
rights had been violated upon the high seas by British ofiicers under 
British authority, challenged Great Britain once more to war. We 
were destitute almost of resources ; we had not yet recovered from 



531 SPEECHES AND ADDRESSES OF WILLIAM McKINLEY. 

m 

the waste of that first dreadful war ; we had no Army ; we had only 
an insignificant Navy. But our rights were trampled upon, and the 
young giant threw down the gauge of battle and invited war with the 
most powerful government on the face of the earth. [Applause.] 
And we won, as men who fight for human rights and liberty and jus- 
tice must always win. [Applause and cheers.] 

After that — after we had disposed of our enemies on the outside, 
and conquered an honorable peace — we turned attention to our own 
internal affairs, and we discovered that slavery was not a good thing 
to have in a free Government. Good men dared to say so, and then 
commenced the agitation against slavery. That continued until 1820, 
wlien the Missouri Compromise was agreed upon, and for a time the 
vexed question slumbered ; but it slumbered only to wake again. 
And then came the Mexican "War, in 184G and 1847 ; and when that 
was .over this great slavery question reappeared with increased viru- 
leuce. Then came the struggle in Kansas between freedom and 
slavery, threatening the very unity of the Republic ; then the odious 
Dred Scott decision ; and then came the mighty Civil War, in which 
the men of the present generation were engaged. 

But the second great event in order of time, next to the Declara- 
tion of Independence and the securing of our liberties, was the forma- 
tion of the Federal Union under a written Constitution. That was 
the second epoch in the history of this Republic. It was a difficult 
and delicate undertaking. Our enemies believed it never could be 
done. Our friends looked on with solicitude. "We were scattered 
Colonies, each acting for itself and each having customs laws of its 
own. One rate of duty on the coast of Rhode Island, another on the 
coast of South Carolina ; one rate of duty in Massachusetts, and 
another in New York. And so we were conducting a lot of little 
independent governments. Finall}^ it was resolved, " We will unite 
these governments into one, under a written Constitution, with a com- 
mon flag, a common purpose and destiny " ; and they did it, and 
from that time the stability, the permanence, and the perpetuity of 
the American Union were assured. [Applause.] 

The third great event in our National history was the war for the 
preservation of the Union. The dreadful cost never can be told ; 
but we do know that for the time occupied we sj^ent more money 
than was ever spent either by France or England in any of the ter- 
rible wars in which they were engaged ; and Ave know that nearly half 
a million of the best and bravest men of the North went down amid 
the shock of battle never to rise again, and that three hundred thou- 



JULY FOURTH AT WOODSTOCK. 535 

sand Confederates were killed in that great struggle for the per- 
petuity of the American Union. The only thought we had was to 
preserve the Union as our fathers had made it. That was the ex- 
pressed purpose of Mr. Lincoln. He said, you will remember : " I 
will save this Union with slavery, or I will save it without slavery, or 
I will save it part slave and j^art free ; it is the Union I am deter- 
mined upon preserving ; I have registered an oath in heaven to that 
effect." But the Union could not be saved with slavery. A power 
higher than man decreed otherwise. [Applause.] And Lincoln 
issued his immortal words of Emancipation; and I do not know any- 
body now who is sorry for it, North or South. [Applause.] 

Now, what is the meaning of this day and celebration ? Why, 
simply that what we have achieved must be perpetuated in its strength 
and purity, not giving up one jot or tittle of the victories won. More 
we do not ask, less we will not have. [Applause.] There never was 
a wrong for which there was not a remedy. There never was a crime 
against the Constitution that there was not a way somewhere and 
somehow found to prevent or punish ; there never was such an abuse 
that did not suggest a reform that pointed to justice and righteous- 
ness. I am not so much troubled about how the thing is to be done 
as I am troubled that the living shall do what is right as the living 
see the right. [Applause.] The future will take care of itself if 
we will do right. As Gladstone said in his peroration presenting the 
remedial legislation for Ireland : 

Walking in the path of justice we can not err; guided by that light we are 
safe. Every step we take upon our road brings us nearer to the goal, and every 
obstacle, though it seem for the moment insurmountable, can only for a little 
while retard, never defeat, the final triumph. 

The fourth of July is memorable among other things because 
George Washington signed the first great industrial measure on that 
day. The very first industrial financial measure that was ever passed 
in the United States was signed by him on the 4th day of July, 1789, 
and therefore I did not think there was any impropriety in Senator 
Aldrich talking about the tariff on this day and occasion. [Laughter 
and applause.] It would not be proper for me to make a tariff speech 
here, although it has been suggested, but I may say with propriety, I 
I am always for the United States. I believe in the American idea of 

liberty, so eloquently described by Chauncey Depew this morning. I 
believe in American independence — not only political independence, 
but industrial independence as well [applause] ; and if I were asked 
to tell in a single sentence what constitutes the strength of the 



536 SPEECHES AND ADDRESSES OP WILLIAM McKINLEY. 

American Eepublic, I would say it was the American home, and what- 
ever makes the American home the best, the purest, and the most 
exalted in the world. It is our homes which exalts the country and 
its citizenship above those of any other land. I have no objection to 
foreign products, but I do like home products better. [Applause.] I 
am not against the foreign product, I am in favor of it — for taxation 
[laughter] ; but I am for the domestic production for consumption. 
Why, George Washington thought it important enough to record it 
in his diary that on his inauguration day he wore to the inauguration 
ceremonies a coat made in New England, and in this State of Con- 
necticut, and buttons made in the State of Rhode Island. There are 
some men who want to be inaugurated President who wouldn't think 
so much of wearing American clothes. [Laughter and applause.] 
Our protective system was never in rebellion against the United 
States ; it has always been for the Union, and against its enemies 
Avhether at home or abroad. It has always sustained the flag of the 
country. It sustained Washington and Jackson, Lincoln and Grant 
and their armies in their great work for the establishment, safety, and 
perpetuity of the Union. 

It is a common thing to say, but a good thing to say, because it is 
true, that we have the best Government in the world. It represents 
the best thought and the best civilization ; aye, more — it represents 
the hope and future of mankind ; and yet it has never been as good 
as its principles. It was not so from the beginning, and is not now 
in complete alignment with its principles as found in its organic law 
and public statutes. Our principles are always better than our prac- 
tices. This is true of individuals as well as nations ; it is true of every 
human organization ; men rarely, if ever, live up to their professions. 
Nations lag behind their declared aims, and states fall short in fulfill- 
ment of the precepts of their written constitutions. Our real lives do 
not measure up to the standard we have raised in our minds. We 
know better than we do, but our knowledge leads us to higher and 
better acts, and our principles, although in advance of our living, are 
constant monitors of good. We would all rather be judged upon what 
we believe, and hope to be, than upon what we do and are. It is well 
that our aims and principles, whether as individuals, or as a Nation, 
are better than our actual practices. Principles must always lead ; they 
are the advance guard of right thought and action, and we are in- 
debted to them for the approach we make to right living and genuine 
progress. The founders of this Republic declared better than they 
did ; their practices often belied their announced purposes. The Dec- 



JULY FOURTH AT WOODSTOCK. 537 

laration of Independence, which sounded the voice of liberty to all 
mankind, was in advance of the thought of the great body of the peo- 
ple, and was in contradiction of the then existing and long-continued 
facts of our history. It took a hundred years of National life and K'a- 
tional thought and earnest agitation, and at last wasting war, to place 
this Government where the Declaration of Independence anchored it. 
Upon every statute-book of every State in the Union, in the statu tes- 
at-large of the Nation, the laws are in advance of the actual admin- 
istration of the States and the Nation. This has always been so, 
and doubtless ever will be. The ideal is always better than the real, 
and yet, with that ideal constantly before us, we grow to it, and liken 
unto its image, and all the time are improving and bettering National 
and individual life. May it never be said to us as De Tocqueville said 
to France, " Are your principles losing their force through your 
example?" But may we always illustrate our faith in their truth 
and immortality, and teach the world that we believe them by honor- 
ing and observing them, if not always living and acting closely to 
them, at least always honestly and earnestly striving to do so ! 

In no country is there so much devolving upon the people relating 
to government as in ours. Unlike any other nation, here the people 
rule, and their will is the supreme law. It is sometimes sneeringly 
said by those who do not like free government, that here we count 
heads. True, heads are counted, but brains also. And the general 
sense of sixty-three millions of free people is better and safer than 
the sense of any favored few, born to nobility and ruling by inherit- 
ance. [Applause.] This Nation, if it Avould continue to lead in the 
race of progress and liberty, must do it through the intelligence and 
conscience of its people. Every honest and God-fearing man is a 
mighty factor in the future of the Republic. Educated men, busi- 
ness men, professional men, should be the last to shirk the responsi- 
bilities attaching to citizenship in a free government. They should 
be practical and helpful— mingling with the people— not selfish and 
exclusive. It is not necessary that every man should enter into poli- 
tics, or adopt it as a profession, or seek political preferment, but it is 
the duty of every man to give personal attention to his political duties. 
They are as sacred and binding as any we have to perform. 

We reach the wider field of politics and shape the National 
policy through the town meeting and the party caucus. They should 
neither be despised nor avoided, but made potent in securing the best 
agents for executing the popular will. The influence which goes 
forth from the township or precinct meeting is felt in State and Na- 



538 SPEECHES AND ADDRESSES OP WILLIAM McKINLEY. 

tional legislation, and is at last embodied in the permanent forms of 
law and written constitutions, I can not too earnestly invite you to 
the closest personal attention to party and political caucuses and the 
primary meetings of your respective parties. They constitute that 
which goes to make up, at last, the popular will. They lie at the 
basis of all true reform. It will not do to hold yourself aloof from 
politics and parties. If the party is wrong, make it better ; that's the 
business of the true partisan and good citizen, for Avhatever reforms 
any of us may hope to accomplish must come through united party 
and political action. We can not purify a party by deserting or de- 
feating it. The country is too large for separate, independent, indi- 
vidual action. A Eepublic of sixty-three millions of people must be 
governed through party organization. 

There must, I repeat, be a remedy for every wrong, a road some- 
where and somehow to be found, which leads to righteousness. We 
can only pursue the right as it appears to us ; the rest we can leave to 
others, and the ultimate victory may be nearer than we think. When 
Lincoln entered upon the execution of his great oflEice in the tur- 
bulent year 1861 he had not formulated the immortal Proclamation 
of Emancipation. AVhen Grant started upon his final campaign 
against Lee, in front of Kichmond, he had not thought of that 
famous letter to the Confederate chieftain announcing the condi- 
tions upon which he would accept the surrender of the opposing 
army. Every great historical event in the world's progress has had 
its preceding steps. Those who guided and directed could not always 
foresee with precision the outcome and the end; they only knew 
what seemed right and true to them, and so pursuing the right and 
truth, mighty epochs have been marked in the world's history, and 
mighty results achieved for mankind. 

Men of New England, preserve the schoolhouse and the town 
meeting. The country owes you much. If your blood does not 
course through all our veins, your civilization runs everywhere 
throughout the Eepublic. 



THE OHIO CAMPAIGN OF 1891. 

The Opening Speech of Me. McKinley's Gubernatorial 
Campaign at Niles, Ohio, August 22, 1891. 

Mr. President and Fellow-Citizens : The campaign in Ohio, 
formally opened to-day on the part of the Republican party, will be 
unusually interesting because of the importance to the State and the 
country of its results in November. It is fortunate that the issues are 
of that character which will excite no bitterness, but are well calcu- 
lated to invite calm and dispassionate judgment. It is fortunate, too, 
that the issues are so well defined and clearly marked that no misun- 
derstanding or evasion can arise. The platforms of the two parties, 
which constitute their official declarations, are singularly free from 
ambiguity and confusion.' Both declare in bold and fearless terms 
their party faith, and both must be considered as the lines upon 
which the political contest is to be waged. I would not change or 
avoid them if I could, and my competitor can not change or avoid 
them if he would. Nor are the issues limited to local questions 
alone. They are general and National. Both platforms speak for 
their respective parties in the State upon those public questions which 
are the exclusive subjects of Federal jurisdiction and Federal legisla- 
tion. 

The Democratic platform declares for the free and unlimited coin- 
age of the silver of the world, to be coined, as freely as gold is now, 
upon the same terms and under the existing ratio. The platform of 
the Republican party stands in opposition to anything short of a full 
and complete dollar. The legislation of the last Congress is the 
strongest evidence which can be furnished of the purpose of the 
Republican party to maintain silver as money, and of its resolution to 
keep it in use as part of our circulating medium equal with gold. 
The law which the Republican party pat upon the statute-book de- 
clares the settled policy of the G-overnment to be " to maintain the 
two metals upon a parity with each other upon the present legal ratio, 
or such ratio as may be provided by law." 
35 



540 SPEECHES AND ADDRESSES OP WILLIAM McKlNLEY. 

The free and unlimited coinage of silver, demanded by the Demo- 
cratic Convention recently held in Cleveland, amounts to this : That 
all the silver of the world, and from every quarter of the world, can 
be brought to the mints of the United States and coined at the ex- 
pense of the Government ; that is, that the mints of the United States 
must receive 412|- grains of silver, which is now worth but eighty 
cents the world over, and coin therefor a silver dollar which, by the 
fiat of the Government, is to be received by the people of the United 
States, and to circulate among them as worth a full dollar of one hun- 
dred cents. The silver producer, whose 412^ grains of silver are 
worth only eighty cents or less in the markets of this country and 
the world, is thus enabled to demand that the Government shall take 
it at one hundred cents. Will the Government be as kind to the 
producer of wheat, and pay him twenty cents more per bushel than 
the market price? The silver dollar now issued under a limited coin- 
age has eighty cents of intrinsic value in it, so accredited the world 
over ; and the other twenty cents is legislative will — the mere breath 
of Congress. That is, what the dollar lacks of value to make it a 
perfect dollar Congress supplies by public declaration, and holds the 
extra twenty cents in the Treasury for its protection. The Govern- 
ment buying the silver at its market value, takes to itself the profit 
between the market value of 412| grains of silver and the face value 
of the silver dollar. Now it is proposed to remove the limit, and to 
make the Government coin, not for account of the Treasury, but for 
the benefit of the silver-mine owner. 

It does not take a wise man to see that, if a dollar worth only 
eighty cents intrinsically, coined without limit, is made a legal tender 
to the amount of its face value, for the payment of all debts, public 
and private, a legal tender in all business transactions among the 
people, it will become in time the exclusive circulating medium of 
the country. Gold, which is twenty per cent more valuable on every 
dollar, will not be paid out in any transactions in this country when 
an eighty-cent silver dollar will answer the purpose. Nor will the 
greenback be long in returning to the Treasury for redemption in 
gold. We shall do our business, therefore, with short dollars rather 
than with full dollars, as we are now doing. The gold dollar will be 
taken from the circulating medium of the country and hoarded, and 
the effect will be that the circulation medium will not be increased, 
but be reduced to the extent of the gold now circulating, and we will 
be compelled to do the business of the country with a silver dollar 
exclusively, which under present conditions is confessedly the poor- 



THE OHIO CAMPAIGN OF 1891. 541 

est, instead of doing our business with gold and silver and paper 
money, all equal and all alike good. The volume of our money will 
therefore be contracted. 

This question of silver is a business one, in which all the people, 
whatever may be their political affiliations, have a deep interest. If 
we could have an international ratio, which all the leading nations of 
the world would adopt, and the true relation be fixed between the 
two metals, and all agree upon the quantity of silver which should 
constitute a dollar, then silver would be as free and unlimited in its 
privileges of coinage as is gold to-day. But that we have not been 
able to secure, and with the free and unlimited coinage of silver 
adopted in the United States at the present ratio, we would be still 
further removed from any international agreement. We may never 
be able to secure it if we enter upon the isolated coinage of silver. 
The leading nations of the world would be glad to put us upon a 
silver basis. There is little doubt that Europe only withholds con- 
sent to an international ratio on account of her belief that we will 
inevitably go to silver. If she believed otherwise she would not be slow 
to give consent. The nations which are on a silver basis alone are 
the poorest nations of the world, and are in constant financial dis- 
turbance and monetary disorder. The danger of free and unlimited 
coinage has been pointed out over and over again by leading states- 
men of both political parties. The position of leading Eepublicans 
upon this question is so well known that I need not pause to quote 
from them. Let me call your attention, therefore, to what the leaders 
of the Democratic party, who are chief in its counsels, say. No one 
has spoken with greater ability on the Democratic side than the ex- 
President of the United States, Hon. Grover Cleveland. His letter 
written but a few months ago, taken in connection with his former 
utterances upon this subject,* shows that nothing could be more 
disastrous, in his Judgment, to the business interests of the country, 
and to the best welfare of all the people, than the free and unlimited 
coinage of silver. 

Mr. Michael D. Harter, a Democratic Eepresentative in the Fifty- 
second Congress, is credited with saying : 

If we are unfortunate and unwise enough to make silver a party question and 
favor the coinage of seventy-five cents' worth of silver into a legal-tender silver 
dollar (the profit going to the owner of the'silver, as it does under free coinage), 
I believe we will lose New York, Connecticut, and New Jersey, and that it will 

* See Mr. Cleveland's letter of February 25, 1885, to Hon. A. J. Warner, mem- 
ber of Congress from Ohio. 



542 SPEECHES AND ADDRESSES OP WILLIAM McKINLEY. 

prevent us carrying Massachusetts, New Hampshire, and six or eight other now 
doubtful States, all of which we can carry if we nominate a great party leader 
and steer clear of this free silver craze. The adoption of this wild idea will not 
bring into the Democratic column a solitary State in the Union. It will be polit- 
ical suicide, and we might as well make an assignment as a party and have a 
receiver appointed. 

"What Mr. Harter believed so imjust and unwise has occurred. 
He uses strong language, and forcibly presents the case of one wing of 
the Democratic party. 

My competitor [Governor Campbell] has said in his reported in- 
terviews that in sentiment, upon this subject, " the Democrats of 
Ohio are very much divided ; that the vote in the Convention was a 
very close one." This close vote only emphasizes the danger of the 
free coinage declaration in the minds of a large number of the Demo- 
crats in the State, and enjoins the importance and necessity of the 
friends of honest money standing together, as in all the contests of 
the past they have been forced to stand together for an honest cur- 
rency. Governor Campbell declared in one of these interviews that 
while he had his doubts about it, he was willing " to chance free and un- 
limited coinage of silver." I am not willing to " chance " it. Under 
present conditions, the country can not afford to chance it. We can 
not gamble with anything so sacred as money, which is the standard 
and measure of all values. I can imagine nothing which would be 
more disturbing to our credit and more deranging to our commercial 
and financial affairs than to make this the dumping ground of the 
world's silver. The silver producer might be benefited, but the silver 
user never. If there is to be any profit in the coinage of silver, it 
should go to the Government. It has gone to the Government ever 
since the Bland- Allison law went into effect. This new declaration 
would take it from the Government and give it to the silver pro- 
ducer. 

Now, the people know that, if we had two yardsticks, one three 
feet in length and the other two and a half feet in length, the buyer 
would always have his goods measured to him by the shorter stick, 
and that the longer stick would go into permanent disuse. It is exactly 
so with money. A one-hundred-cent dollar will go out of circulation 
alongside an eighty-cent dollar, which is a legal tender by the fiat of 
the Government. And no class of people will suffer so much as the 
wage-earner and the agriculturist. If it is the farmer you would 
benefit, there is one way to do it. Make the bushel measure with 
which ho measures his wheat for the buyer three pecks instead of 



THE OHIO CAMPAIGN OF 1891. 543 

four, and require the buyer to pay as much for three pecks as he now 
pays for four. 

I am in favor of the double standard, but I am not in favor of the 
free and unlimited coinage of silver in the United States until the 
nations of the world shall join us in guaranteeing to silver a status 
which their laws now accord to gold. The double standard implies 
equality at a ratio, and that equality can only be established by the 
concurrent law of nations. It was the concurrent law of nations that 
made the double standard ; it will require the concurrent law of na- 
tions to reinstate and sustain it. Until then for us to decree the free 
and unlimited coinage of the world's silver would be to ordain that 
our silver dollars must surely depreciate, and gold inevitably go 
to a premium. No man knows what the future may be, but in our 
present condition and with our present light every consideration of 
safety requires us to hold our present status until the other great 
nations shall agree to an international ratio. 

Besides being against a depreciation of our currency, on principle 
and for the reasons stated, I still have another reason, which, if it 
stood alone, would be conclusive to my mind, and would place me in 
opposition to the Democratic scheme of putting in circulation a short 
dollar. The money creditors of the Government, which include the 
bondholders, and those who loaned their money to the Government 
in the time of war, have been largely paid off, and in every in- 
stance paid off in the best money of the country. The principal 
creditors of the Government to-day are not the bondholders, nor the 
men of capital and large means, but the soldiers who fought the bat- 
tles of the Union in the most sacred and stainless cause in which 
mankind has ever engaged. In 1867 the Government owed to its 
creditors, whose evidence of indebtedness was in the form of bonds, 
nearly 13,000,000,000, upon which it annually paid, in interest alone, 
S143, 781,000. The pension roll of the country was then but $20,935,- 
000. When the attempt was made at that time by the leaders of the 
party that now stands in opposition to the Eepublican party to re- 
pudiate the debt to the bondholder, or pay it off in depreciated cur- 
rency, insisting that we never could pay it in full, the soldiers stood 
with the party which represents good faith to our creditors and the 
honorable payment of every obligation, and swept back the tide of in- 
flation and repudiation. They said that the Union which they saved 
from armed force should have no stain upon its financial honor, but 
every debt it had contracted to preserve the Union should be paid in 
the best coin of the Republic, and every obligation should be sacredly 



544 SPEECHES AND ADDRESSES OP WILLIAM McKINLEY. 

kept and observed. They were willing to wait for their pensions 
until the great money obligation was discharged. The Government 
credit was therefore sustained, and over two thousand millions of that 
great debt has been paid off, not in a clipped dollar but in a full dollar. 
The positions are to-day reversed. The chief money creditors of 
the Government are now the soldiers ; they are in every Northern 
State, in most of the States of the South, and in every Territory and 
the District of Columbia. The interest on the public debt to the 
bondholder is only $27,000,000 annually, as against $143,000,000 in 
1867, and the pension roll of the soldiers, their widows and orphans, 
in 1891, is 8137,000,000, as against $20,000,000 in 18G7. Shall not 
the soldier have his great debt paid off in the same coin as the bond- 
holder ? Is it right to force upon him a dollar worth 80 cents when 
the other creditors of the Government were paid a dollar worth 100 
cents ? Is it just to the pensioner who is given $12 a month to be 
paid in a silver dollar worth 80 cents, and thus receive $9.60 as his 
monthly pension rather than the $12 which the Government has 
contracted to pay him ? For one I shall never consent that the sol- 
diers of the country shall be paid in any poorer coin than the most 
favored creditors of the Government. 

Ohio has never in the past given her vote for a debased currency 
and she will not do so in the future. When the country was wild for 
inflation, in 1875, under pressure of hard times (and they were hard), 
the sober sense of the people of this State, without regard to party, 
temmed that awful tide. The people of Ohio had more to do than, 
any other State or constituency of the Union in keeping the Nation 
upon the rock of honest finance and honest currency. Thousands of 
Democrats helped in that great struggle— not through their own 
party organization, but by leaving their party and joining with the 
party which represented good faith and honest dealing with the 
public creditor. They can take no other course this year. And the 
people of Ohio will take no backward step. 

It may be worth while to know the per capita of our circulation 
at different periods of our history. It is now greater in this country 
than at any other period before. The amount of money in circula- 
tion was about $435,000,000, in 1860, and the amount jwer capita was 
$13.85. In 1865 there were $723,000,000 in circulation, and the ;jer 
capita was $20.82. On January 5, 1891, the circulation was $1,329,- 
000,000 or $24.10 |jer capita. It may be necessary to increase this 
circulation, but it can not be done and must not be done with silver 
dollars that are worth less than one hundred cents each in value. 



THE OHIO CAMPAIGN OF 1891. 545 

On the subject of the tariff the issue is equally well defined. The 
Democratic platform declares for a purely revenue tariff, and will not 
consent that the tariff shall perform any other service. Duties must 
be levied with a view to revenue, and upon those foreign products 
which will yield the greatest revenue, and which will not, incidentally 
or otherwise, favor domestic labor. Its one mission, and one mission 
only, is that of raising revenue. If in its operations it should favor a 
home production, it would be obnoxious to the principle upon which 
it was originally levied, and must be repealed or modified. A 
revenue tariff, pure and simple, such as the Democratic party in 
Ohio advocates, can benefit and encourage and build up no home 
industry. It does not encourage labor save in foreign countries. It 
does not turn a single spindle save in foreign countries. It increases 
the demand for foreign goods and diminishes the use of domestic 
goods. It is for the foreign shoj) and against the American shop. 
It supplies work for foreign labor and takes it from our own labor. 
It would not light a single fire in an American furnace or mill, but 
would extinguish those which now burn, unless our laborers would 
work at the same wages as the laborers of competing countries. In 
short, it is well conceived to benefit every other nation but our own. 
A revenue tariff has not in our experience been a success even as 
an agency for raising the money required for public purposes. It 
has more than once failed in our history to supply the revenue wants 
of the Government. It has found our country prosperous and our 
Treasury well supplied with revenue, and a few years under its opera- 
tion has left the Treasury bankrupt and the business of the country 
in a deplorable condition. 

It is said that protection is a burden upon the people. If so, we 
should find some manifestation of it somewhere. We have been 
living under it for thirty years. Where does the burden rest ? The 
masses of the people of our country were never so well off as they 
are to-day. They are better off than the rest of mankind. There 
never were so many men in this country who owned their own homes 
as there are to-day. There never were so many workmen who had 
accumulations in the savings banks of the country as there are to-day. 
There never were so many comforts, refinements, and cultivated 
homes as there are in this country to-day. No nation of the world 
can present such a picture of progress, prosperity, and plenty. 

Again, is it true, as our opponents recklessly claim, that protect- 
ive tariffs have piled up the debts of the United States ? Let the 
records answer : The monthly report of the Secretary of the Treas- 



546 SPEECHES AND ADDRESSES OF WILLIAM McKINLEY. 

ury discloses how the National debt is being reduced. We have paid 
off more than two thirds of it. State debts have been reduced, and 
county and municipal debts also. See what has been done in this 
direction in twenty years, from 1870 to 1890 : 

III twenty years, from 1870 to 1890, inclusive, 

the Federal debt has been reduced from (1870) $2,386,000,000 

to (1890) 988,000,000 

The State debts have been reduced from (1870) 352,000,000 

to (1890) 152,000,000 

The county debts have been reduced from (1870) 187,000,000 

to (1890) 115,000,000 

In the same time our population has increased from 38,558,371 to 
62,632,250, so that the per capita debt is only $28, compared with 
nearly $76 twenty years ago. The^^r capita debt of this country is 
less than that of any other country of the world. Here is the record : 
Belgium, $72.18; France, $218.27; Germany, $43.10; Great Britain, 
$100.09; Italy, $74.25; Peru, $140.06; Portugal, $104.18; Russia, 
$35.41 ; Spain, $73.34 ; United States, $28. Free-trade England in- 
creased her rate of taxation between 1870 and 1890 over 24 per cent. 
The United States has diminished hers in the same period nearly 10 
per cent. , 

Measured by its usefulness in the development of the country, the 
protective tariff is again unfailing. No nation in the world has 
reached such a degree of development as we have attained in the last 
thirty years. In every department of industry, in every avenue of 
human endeavor, we have illustrated the most marvelous advance- 
ment, and in those years we have risen in industrial development to 
the very first rank in manufacturing, agriculture, and mining, leading 
every other nation in the world. But it is said by our opponents that 
this system enriches the few and impoverishes the many. Wealth in 
England has been concentrated in the hands of the few to a far 
greater extent than in the United States. The masses of our people, 
those who labor, whether in the factory or on the farm, are richer in 
real wealth than in any other country on the globe. 

It is also said that protective tariffs have increased the mortgages 
of the country. This is a false and absurd statement. Let me re- 
mind you that mortgages are not always an evidence of poverty. 
They are much oftener striking evidences of prosperity. I admit 
that mortgages given for living expenses, for grocery bills, for taxes, 
etc., do give evidence of the poverty of the mortgagor. But if a 
workman in this city, having accumulated a thousand dollars, con- 



THE OHIO CAMPAIGN OF 1891. 54^ 

eludes that he wants to buy a home, and, finding one which costs 
him two thousand dollars, pays a thousand dollars cash and gives a 
mortgage for the remainder of the purchase money, that mortgage is 
not an evidence of poverty. It is the strongest evidence of the thrift 
and prosperity of the mortgagor. Take the farmer having 160 acres 
of land who wants to add IGO acres more to his farm. He has suf- 
ficient accumulations to enable him to make the first payment, and 
purchases the adjoining land, giving a mortgage for the remaining 
payments. That does not mean that he is distressed and poverty- 
stricken. It means that he is getting on— that he has faith in him- 
self and the future. 

You may try the system of protection by any test you will, I care 
not what it is, and it meets every emergency ; it answers every de- 
mand. More than that, it has never been against the Government, 
either in peace or in war. It is the patriotic system. It is for the 
country. It believes in America for Americans, native and natural- 
ized. It legislates for them and nobody else. It preserves the home 
market for the people at home and secures them work and wages. 
Why is not the system that does these things the best ? There is 
nothing either in conscience or in good morals which can require us 
to give up this market to people beyond the jurisdiction of this coun- 
try, who owe no allegiance to its flag, and who can not be reached by 
the Federal arm in war, nor by the Federal tax-gatherer in peace, ex- 
cept upon terms which we shall prescribe favorable to our citizens. 
This is the testimony of history and can not be contradicted. 

Governor Campbell, in his speech accepting the nomination of the 
Democratic State Convention, speaking of the earlier tariffs, declared 
that " the tariff of Washington, of Hamiliton, and of Jefferson aver- 
aged only 7^ per cent." These laws he commends, and would have 
us return to them. I fear he is not familiar with those early tarifl's. 
In the eight years of Mr. Jefferson's administration the average ad 
valorem rate on all imports, free and dutiable, was 19.75. In 1804, 
in the midst of Jefferson's administration, the average rate was 23.40, 
not 7|- per cent, as Mr. Campbell stated. In 1820 the average rate 
was 22.29; in 1830,45.31; in 1840,15.45; in 1850,23.16; in 1860, 
15.67; in 1870, 42.23; 1880, 29.7; and in 1890, 29.12. These are 
the average rates upon all articles, both free and dutiable. Under 
the act of 1789—" the tariff of Washington "—the duty on common 
salt was ten cents per bushel, and later in Washington's time it was 
increased to twenty cents per bushel. Under the law of 1890 it is 
less than five cents a bushel. Would the Governor have us reimpose 



54:8 SPEECHES AND ADDRESSES OF WILLIAM McKINLEY. 

this enormous duty on salt ? The duty on coal under the Washing- 
ton and JeSerson tariffs was equal to $1.40 a ton, while the tariff on 
coal under the new law is 75 cents a ton. The duty on cordage 
under the Washington and Jefferson tariffs was 2 cents and 2^ cents 
a pound ; under the new law it is 1^ cents a pound. The duty on 
nails under the tariffs of Washington and Jefferson was 2 cents a 
pound, and under the new law it is 1 cent a pound. The duty on 
twine and pack-thread under the tariffs of AVashington and Jefferson 
was 4 cents a pound ; under Madison, 8 cents a pound ; and under 
the new from -{^ of a cent to 1^ cents a pound. The duty on raw 
cotton under the tariffs of Washington and Jefferson was 3 cents a 
pound ; under the new law it is free. The duty on molasses under 
the tariffs of AVashington and Jefferson was 3 and 5 cents a gallon ; 
under Madison it was 10 cents a gallon ; under the new law it is free. 
The duty on sugar, brown and raw, under the tariffs of Washington 
and Jefferson was 2^ cents a pound ; under the Madison tariff it was 
5 cents a pound, and under the new law it is free. The duty on loaf 
sugar under the tariffs of Washington and Jefferson was 9 cents a 
pound ; under the Madison tariff it was 8 cents a pound, and under 
the new law it is a half cent a pound. Under the Washington tariff 
there were but seventeen articles free of duty, as follows : Saltpeter, 
tin in pigs, tin plates, lead, old pewter, brass, iron and brass wire, 
copper in plates, wool, dyeing woods and dyeing drugs, rawhides, 
beaver and other furs, and deer-skins. In the new law three hundred 
paragraphs are required to name the articles that are free of duty, 
and their number reaches into the hundreds. 

There was much said by Governor Campbell, in his speech at 
Cleveland, about the low price of wool. He stated incorrectly, and I 
have no doubt by inadvertence, that the farmer of Ohio was only 
getting 20 cents a pound for his wool. At the time he made this 
statement the farmer was receiving for his choice clips 28 and 29 
cents. The inference from his speech would be that the increased 
duty on wool is the cause of depressed prices. If this be true, then the 
tariff is not a tax. This was not the Democratic doctrine in Ohio in 
1883 and 1884. They then believed that the tariff did help the wool 
grower, and that a great outrage had been committed uj^on him when 
the duty was reduced 11 per cent by the tariff law of 1883. They so 
declared in a document issued by the Democratic State Committee 
of that year, and demanded of the wool growers of the State that the 
party that committed that great outrage should be defeated at the 
polls. And I may say, in passing, that they were defeated. Their 



I 



THE OHIO CAMPAIGN OF 1891. 549 

statement was that the Ohio wool growers had been " fleeced out of " 
six million dollars by the reduction of 11 per cent of the duty. The 
Governor was one of those who believed it then. 

In 1884, when the Democratic party had the Legislature in 
Ohio, a leading Democrat, Mr. Bohl, introduced the following reso- 
lution : 

H. J. R. No. 1 : Whereas, The Forty-seventh Congress reduced the tariff on 
imported wool, against the protest of every wool grower of the State of Ohio, and 
of the United States ; and 

\V7iereas, Tlie said reduction of tariff on imported wool discriminates 
against the wool growers of the West in favor of the manufacturers of the East. 
thereby compelling the wool growers of the West to compete with the cheap wool 
of foreign countries to their very great injury; and 

Whereas, That tariff was reasonable and not too high before the reduction, 
and stands now at a rate so low as to injuriously affect that large and respectable 
class of people who have devoted themselves to wool growing ; and 

Whereas, An Ohio Congressman* has already introduced a bill in the 
House of Representatives of the Forty-eighth Congress to restore the tariff on 
wool as it stood prior to the recent reduction, which should be passed at the ear- 
liest time possible ; therefore be it 

Resolved, by the Getieral Assembly of the State of Ohio, That our Senators in 
Congress be and are hereby instructed and our Representatives requested to vote 
for this bill, and to use all honorable means to secure its passage, to restore the 
tariff on wool as it stood prior to the recent reduction, and the Governor be re- 
quested to send a copy of this resolution to each of our Senators and Representa- 
tives at Washington. 

The question recurring on the adoption of the resolution, the yeas 
and nays were taken, and resulted— yeas 84, nay 1. It received the 
support of every Democrat in the Legislature who voted upon it but 
one, and was signed on January 23, 1884. 

The wrong of 1883 was righted at the very first moment that the 
Republican party secured control of Congress, and was not righted in 
all the years the Democrats were in control. The new law gives the 
wool grower better protection than he ever had before. The wool of 
the world has fallen in price. American tariffs do not fix the price 
of foreign wool, but they do stand as a wall of defense to the Ameri- 
can wool grower against the wool produced on cheaper lands and by 
cheaper labor in other countries. 

The new tariff law went into effect October 6, 1890. It had been 
in operation, therefore, a few days short of nine months on the 30th 
of June last. The last official report we have of the statement of 

* Hon. George L. Converse, of Columbus, Ohio. 



550 SPEECHES AND ADDRESSES OF WILLIAM McKINLEY. 

foreign commerce, issued by the Bureau of Statistics of the Treasury- 
Department, shows that the total value of imports of merchandise 
during those nine months was 8630,206,000. During the correspond- 
ing period of 1890 the total value of imports of merchandise was 
8598,769,305. There were, therefore, imported during the nine 
months of 1891, under the new tarifE law, $31,436,100 more than in 
the corresponding period of 1890, under the operation of the old law. 
As showing the effect of the operation of the new law, it is impor- 
tant to know what proportion of these imports were free and what 
proportion were dutiable, both under the old and new laws. During 
the nine months ending June 30, 1891, the foreign goods admitted 
free of duty were valued at $295,993,665. During the nine months 
ending June 30, 1890, the value of free imports was $208,983,873 
— an increase of free importations in favor of the new law of $86,- 
979,792. The foreign goods which were dutiable under the new law 
in that period were 8334,242,340 in value, and for the nine months, 
under the old law, ending June 30, 1890, the foreign goods dutiable 
were $389,786,032, being a decrease in the value of merchandise paying 
duty under the new law in the sum of $55,543,692. Under the new 
law 46^ per cent of all of our imports in value were admitted free of 
duty, and for the same period under the old law 34^ per cent were 
admitted free of duty. That is to say : Under the new law, which 
our opponents assert is prohibitory, and a great increase of duties 
over the old law, 4:0^ per cent in value of all our imports were free 
and 53^^ per cent paid a duty ; while under the old law, for a like 
period, 34^ per cent of our imports were free, and 65-^^ per cent paid 
a duty. Such a showing of free imports can not be found under any 
tariff law since the beginning of the Government. 

Our foreign commerce for the year ending June 30, 1891, was 
greater than it has ever been before. The total value of the products 
we bought abroad and sold abroad, from June 30, 1890, to June 30, 
1891, was 11,729,330,896— an increase over those of 1890 of $82,191,- 
803, and an excess over those of 1889 of $241,797,867. The value of 
our imports for the fiscal year 1891 was the greatest of our history, 
and exceeded those of 1890 in the sura of $55,595,082. This increase 
is made up largely of the following articles : Coffee, tea, tin plates, 
hides and skins, chemicals, drugs, dyes, and medicines, fruits, raw 
wool, India rubber, gutta percha, sugar, and molasses, which for the 
most part we do not produce in the United States. Yet with this 
unprecedented importation our exports exceeded our imports in the 
sum of $39,579,314. So that a law which our opponents declare is 



THE OHIO CAMPAIGN OF 1891. 55I 

in restraint of trade, is in fact an encouragement of trade, with the 
balance fortunately in our favor, as it should always be. 

The predictions made by the enemies of the new law nine months 
ago have not been verified, but, on the contrary, have been shown to 
be mere assumptions, utterly without foundation. They served a 
political purpose, and worked a positive injury to the merchant and 
the manufacturer and the consumer. There are few merchants in 
the State of Ohio who have not suffered from the exaggeration of the 
importer and the false prophet, whose dire prophecies of the effects 
of the new law caused them to increase their purchases and pay higher 
prices, which prices have since fallen ; and in some instances the 
goods that the merchant has on hand can be replaced at from 10 to 
20 per cent less than he paid for them. Prices to-day in staple goods 
are less than they were during the months of October, November, and 
December of last year, and there is scarcely a manufactured article 
which goes into the family, and which is classed as a necessity, that 
has not fallen in price and is not less than it has been for many years. 
I have heard of hundreds of men who, relying upon what Demo- 
cratic orators and Democratic newspapers and their importing allies 
were saying touching the great advance which was to take place, em- 
barrassed themselves to lay in a stock before the prices advanced, to 
find they can now buy the same articles at retail at much less than 
they then paid. The people were deceived once, but are not likely 
to be beguiled into a similar mistake again. They will surely not 
follow the business advice of this class of political alarmists in the 
future. It is always better to be frank, and candid, and honest with 
the people. One thing is certain, and that is that the prices of manu- 
factured articles have not advanced, but, as a rule, have diminished 
in price. Another thing is equally certain — existing industries have 
been stimulated to greater activity, and there is a wider demand for 
labor than there has been for many years, while new enterprises are 
springing up all over the land ; and this, too, in spite of the conspiracy 
of the Democratic leaders to destroy confidence and discourage in- 
vestments. 

There are 843 articles on the various schedules of the new tariff 
law. Of these the duties on 190 were reduced. The duties on 80 of 
these articles were changed from ad valorem to specific, because ex- 
perience has shown that ad valorem duties invite fraud upon the rev- 
enue and operate unfairly against the honest merchant and importer. 
There are 249 articles in the new law on which the duties are 
identical with those under the previous law. Upon what articles 



552 SPEECHES AND ADDRESSES OF WILLIAM McKlNLEY. 

were the duties increased ? Forty-eight of the increases were upon 
agricultural products, forty-three upon wool and its products, twenty- 
four upon flax and its products. Forty per cent of the increases was 
for the better protection of farm products. Twenty-eight of the in- 
creases were upon champagne, wine, and spirits, five on tobacco, one 
on opium, three on silk. Duties were increased upon liquors, cham- 
pagne, tobacco, silk, embroideries, laces, fine hosiery, broadcloth, fine 
linens, opium for smoking, fine cut glass, French and German china, 
firearms, playing cards, pearl buttons, jewelry, pianos, seal fur, and 
tin plate. The duties on 185 articles under the new law are the 
same as was proposed by the Mills bill. The reductions are upon 
sugar, molasses, leather, boots and shoes, lumber, rice, starch, trace 
chains, hammers, spikes, tacks and nails, wire, screws, nuts and 
washers, files, rasps, ropes, binder's twine, log chains, iron piping, 
stove plates, horseshoes, sewing needles, copper and products of, lead 
and products of, nickel and products of, structural iron, bar iron, 
hoop iron, sheet iron, steel rails, wire rope and wire netting, books 
for the blind, varnishes, turpentine, camphor, chloroform, glycerine, 
and medicinal preparations. 

This plain statement of facts, taken from the new law, should be 
and is a conclusive refutation of the statements of free traders, and 
ought to set right those who have blindly accepted the misrepresenta- 
tion of our adversaries. There are no prohibitive duties in the law. 
Yes, there are. We prohibit the importation of obscene literature. 
We prohibit the importation of foreign goods bearing an Ameri- 
can name or trade mark, and insist that the foreign goods shall be 
marketed upon their own merits under their own trade mark. We 
prohibit the United States Government from importing anything 
which is dutiable except upon payment of duties. Heretofore the 
United States Government could buy its supplies abroad free of duty, 
and did it altogether too frequently. It must hereafter obey the law 
which it requires its citizens to observe. We prohibit the importa- 
tion of goods produced by the convict labor of other lands. We had 
protected free labor at home against the convict labor at home, but 
never before against the convict labor abroad. This new law stops 
the products of European convicts from competing with those made 
by our free American labor, and will not permit such products to be 
landed on our shores. 

It is over and over again asserted that the farmer can not possibly 
be benefited by a tariff on farm products — that he has a surplus, and 
therefore that he must seek a foreign market to dispose of it. There 



THE OHIO CAMPAIGN OP 1891. 553 

seems to be a general impression that no products come into the 
United States in competition with American farm products. An 
examination of the imports of 1890 most effectually disposes of this 
assumption. Let me enumerate some of them : Value of cattle, 
horses, and sheep imported in 1890, 13,270,277 ; breadstuffs, 16,034,- 
272 ; fruits, $13,871,801 ; hay, $1,143,4^5 ; hops, $1,053,616 ; flax, 
12,188,021 ; hemp, 17,341,956 ; meat and dairy products, $2,011,314 ; 
rice, 12,042,120 ; linseed, flaxseed, and other seeds, $3,530,631 ; leaf 
tobacco, $17,605,192; vegetables, $4,455,374; wool, $15,264,083; 
total, $79,812,102. Besides, 15,062,076 dozen eggs were imported in 
1890, worth easily $1,500,000, on which no duty whatever was paid. 
It will be seen that in 1890 we imported fully $80,000,000 worth of 
farm products, many of which, it is believed, will be produced here 
under the protection given by the new tariff law. 

The Democracy are now claiming that placing sugar on the free 
list is in the direct line of their economic theory and principle. They 
would have the country believe that they have always advocated free 
sugar, and that this is one of the items of the bill which they thor- 
oughly approved. Such is most remote from the truth, as the history 
and record of the party will show, first and foremost : Every tariff bill 
which the Democratic party ever formulated and passed has placed a 
duty upon sugar, raw and refined. Every tariff bill which they have 
proposed to pass placed a duty upon sugar. Sugar was made dutiable 
under the Walker Tariff of 1846. It was dutiable under the first bill 
which the Democratic party offered after the war, known as the Wood 
tariff bill." It was made dutiable under the two Morrison bills and 
the Mills bill. Second, the record will show that every Democrat in 
the House voted against the clause of the new law making sugar free, 
and voted for the retention of the duty of two and a half cents a pound. 
In the Senate a united Democratic vote opposed the free sugar clause, 
and justified their opposition because it was a revenue duty and in 
strict accord with the economic principle advocated by the Demo- 
cratic party. So that we have free sugar under a protective tariff, 
which has been impossible under free trade or a revenue tariff ; and 
we have it free under a protective tariff because under the principle 
of protection we do not tax those foreign products which experience 
and a thorough trial have demonstrated we can not produce in quan- 
tities sufficient for our own consumption. By this one section of the 
law $55,000,000 is secured to the people. Instead of collecting this 
sum, as it would be under a revenue tariff, it is left in the pockets of 
the people. But it is said that free sugar is accompanied with a bounty 



554: SPEECHES AND ADDRESSES OF WILLIAM McKINLEY. 

provision which is even more burdensome than the tax itself. This is 
not true. We did provide for a bounty to the sugar producers of the 
United States. The Eepublican party was unwilling to do anything 
which would destroy this industry and make valueless the millions of 
dollars invested therein ; and so the Eepublicans provided that, the 
tariff having been removed, the sugar producers of this country should 
receive a bounty equal to the tariff. This will encourage and stimu- 
late the production of sugar, if anything can, and it will cost the Gov- 
ernment this year less than $11,000,000 — an actual saving of $44,000,- 
000, for the duties amounted to $55,000,000. 

There is much criticism about the duty on tin plate, and fully as 
much misrepresentation as there is criticism. It is generally supposed 
that under the new law tin ore or block tin is now dutiable. Under 
section 209 of the law it will be seen that the duty on block tin goes 
into effect on July 1, 1893. That is, the manufacturers of tin plate 
have free tin ore or block tin for two years. Then there is this further 
provision : 

That unless it shall be made to appear to the satisfaction of the President of 
the United States, who shall make known the fact by proclamation, that the 
products of the mines of the United States shall have exceeded 5,000 tons in one 
year prior to July 1, 1895, then all pig tin shall, after July 1, 1895, be admitted 
free of duty. 

The duty on tin plates went into effect on July 1, 1891. There is 
also a provision in the law that on and after October 1, 1897, unless 
it shall be made to appear to the satisfaction of the President, who 
shall thereupon make proclamation of the fact, that the aggregate 
quantity of such tin plates produced in the United States during 
either of the years next preceding June 30, 1897, is equal to one third 
the amount of such tin plates imported and entered for consumption 
during any fiscal year after the passage of this act, and prior to Octo- 
ber 1, 1897, then they shall become free. 

It is said we can not make tin plate. How absurd ! — for we are 
already making it, and it will not be long until we shall make the 
larger part of the home consumption. We are making tin plate to- 
day. It is to be made here in Niles. There are preparations to make 
it at Irondale, in this State. It is made in Chicago, St. Louis, and 
in the State of Pennsylvania. Democratic discouragement can not 
stop it ; foreign interference can not check American genius and reso- 
lution. 

We know what foreign free traders are saying of the new law. 
It will be instructive to know what they said of the protective 



THE OHIO CAMPAIGN OF 1891. 555 

law of 18G1. Listen to this from the London Times of March 
5, 1861: 

The bill called the " Morrill Tariff Bill " is an act for the establishment of 
protective duties on a most extravagant scale. If it were designed to condemn 
the very principles of free trade, and to introduce those of protection as forming 
the only true theory of international commerce, it could not have been more 
strongly formed. The duties imposed by this bill are not only immoderately 
high, but they are levied upon imports of the first necessity. The articles taxed 
are not mere luxuries or commodities entering into the consumption of the opu- 
lent alone. It is upon cotton goods, woolen goods, and hardware that the imposts 
will fall. Cutlery is to be taxed upward of 50 per cent in the lowest instance ; in 
the highest, nearly 250. In addition to this, the bill enacts so many complicated 
arrangements and throws such interminable obstructions in the way of business, 
that commerce will be next to impossible under conditions so difficult. We need 
not enter into particulars of the act, which is said to be scarcely intelligible even 
to Americans themselves ; but we can convey a very good idea of its character 
and purpose by observing that, if it should be passed, it will almost prohibit all 
imports into the United States from England, France, and^jermany. That bill 
would be far more detrimental to the interests of America than to those of Europe. 
The blow would do little damage to this country ; but such a proposal, at such a 
moment, will look like a new sacrifice of the Southern States to the exigencies of 
the Northern, and will intensify the quarrel between them by jealousies which 
will survive after the political tempest has rolled away. It has now become per- 
fectly known that protection in these matters is only another name for suicide ; 
and when a state establishes a prohibitory tariff, it is itself the sufferer from its 
own ordinances. If the backwoodsmen of America are to be deprived of good 
axes, and settlers of cheap clothing, the penalty will be paid by them. At the 
same time, however, though we shall not think the less of America for this meas- 
ure, except as regards her financial wisdom, we must needs remark, that as amity 
follows free trade, so is estrangement or indifference likely to follow commercial 
seclusion. It is rather an extraordinary reflection that what we have just been 
endeavoring to do, at some cost, as regards France, America should propose to 
undo as regards us. If the people of the United States should refuse to purchase 
in our markets what it is for their own interest to buy, and if they should decide 
upon manufacturing for themselves the articles which we could send them at a 
less price and of a better quality, they, and they only, will be the losers. 

I read this that you may realize that what is said of the law of 1890 
was said of the law of 1861, and, for that matter, of 1842, of 1828, of 
1824, and of every other American protective law. This editorial of 
the London Times, written thirty years ago, has been over and over 
again repeated, almost in the identical language, since the passage of 
the law of 1890, in the same paper, and iterated and reiterated by the 
free-trade journals of the United States. They were wrong in their 
prophecies then, they are just as wrong in their prophecies now. 

" The bill of 1861," says this paper, " will be far more detrimental 
36 



556 SPEECHES AND ADDRESSES OF WILLIAM McKINLEY. 

to the interests of America than to those of Europe." That is what 
they say of the present law. The law of 1861 detrimental to the 
interests of America ! Think of it ! It was the beginning of a new 
and better United States. It built factories ; it employed labor ; it 
encouraged genius and invention ; it built cities ; it opened mines ; 
it extended agriculture and gave the farmer a home market ; and, 
while doing this, supplied the revenue to keep the war going for the 
preservation of the Union, and since then has been rapidly extin- 
guishing the National debt, and wresting from England the manu- 
facturing supremacy she has so long enjoyed. Is it any wonder that 
British manufacturers feel the deepest interest and concern in our 
elections, which are to maintain or destroy the protective policy? 
They do not conceal their feeling of bitterness against the American 
policy. I wish I might read you the many thousands of extracts 
from the English press preceding and following the elections of 1890. 
Their alliance with one wing of the Democratic party can no longer 
be denied. They fairly hugged themselves over the defeat sustained 
by the Republicans last year, and gave vent to expressions which 
every true American citizen should heed. Let me cite you some 
British testimony : 

Sheffield Daily Telegram, November 11th : " The Democrats have won. Hur- 
rah for the glorious triumph of free trade ! " 

Vanity Fair, November 8th : " It is probable that the bill as a bill has received 
far more attention in England than it ever did in America." 

English Standard, October 27th : " The indignation all over Europe against the 
United States is extreme." 

Leeds Weekly, November 28th : " Englishmen will naturally rejoice over the 
downfall of the Republicans." 

Western Morning News, November 11th: "The victory of the Democrats is 
very gratifying." 

The Manchester Examiner refers to the American system of protection as 
" our old enemy." 

The English press is much concerned about the American farmer ! 
England had better be more mindful of her own, under whose indus- 
trial policy the farmer has been driven from the soil to make a living, 
and year after year, if he remains, is compelled to incur increasing 
debt and submit to distressing poverty. 

The tariff of 1890 will win its own way ; it will achieve its own 
victories, and they will be victories for American labor, American 
enterprise, and American genius, and for the whole American people. 
We neither take our patriotism nor our political economy from other 
nations. If we had done so we would yet be in our swaddling clothes, 



THE OHIO CAMPAIGN OF 1891. 557 

a depeudency and province of Great Britain, instead of the first and 
best Government on the face of the earth, a Government of equal 
citizenship, equal opportunities, and equal laws. 

Much as the Republican party has done, it has great things yet to 
do. It will be a mighty force in the future as it has been a mighty 
force in the past. Its glories will continue to blaze on the heights, a 
beacon to the world, pointing to a higher destiny for mankind, and 
the upholding and uplifting of a Nation approved of God. It will 
not pause in its march and achievements until the Flag, the Flag of 
the Stars, shall be the unquestioned symbol of sovereignty at home 
and of American rights abroad ; until American labor shall be secure- 
ly shielded from the degrading competition of the Old World, and our 
entire citizenship from the vicious and criminal classes who are crowd- 
ing our shores ; never while the advocates of a debased dollar threaten 
the country with its financial heresies ; and never until the free right 
to vote in every corner of the country shall be protected under the 
law, and by the law, and for the law ; never until the American bal- 
lot box shall be held as sacred as the American home. 



THE AMEKICAN WOKKINGMAN. 
An" Addeess at CI^"CINNATI, Ohio, September 1, 1891. 

Mr. President and Members of the Labor Organiza- 
tions OF Cincinnati : I am very glad to meet the laboring people 
of Cincinnati, and join with them in the celebration of this day, dedi- 
cated to their pleasure and recreation. I come by invitation of your 
Committee, not to make a formal address, but to express by my pres- 
ence the interest which I feel in the cause which you represent, and 
to participate with you in the suitable recognition of " Labor Day." 
|T^here is nothing too good for the men who work. The daj^s of 
rest and recuperation in our pushing, busy age are too few, altogether 
too few, and the setting apart of this public holiday is a step worthy 
our highest commendation, and is an honorable recognition of labor, 
which is the foundation of our wealth and production. I am for- 
bidden, by the occasion and the proprieties which belong to it, of 
speaking of those matters about which there is division on political 
lines. We get quite enough of ]3olitics, and I forbear intruding such 
topics on this social assemblage. 

Nowhere in the world has the cause of labor, its rights and its 
dignities, been more triumphant than in the United States. Labor 
here is free and independent ; slave labor has been abolished, and the 
workman makes his own contracts and enters only into voluntary em- 
ployment. He is his own master ; no man owns his laborer. He is 
respected and honored in every walk of life, he has by merit forged 
his way to the very front rank in mechanism and invention, and his 
trophies are seen on every hand. The advantages which we enjoy as 
a people, and which crown the opportunities we enjoy above all other 
nations, are the character and quality of our labor. American work- 
men are, as a body, the most ingenious and intelligent of the world. 
Inventiveness has come to be a National trait. The United States 
Government issues four times as many patents as Great Britain, our 
greatest competitor. From the Patent Office in Washington, during 
the past decade, there have been issued annually from 18,000 to 
22,000 patents, the greatest number in the history of any country in 



THE AMERICAN WORKINGMAN. 559 

any previous period of the world's history. At the International 
Electrical Exposition at Paris, a few years ago, five gold medals were 
offered for the greatest inventions or discoveries. How many of 
them, do you suppose, came to the United States? Only five. 
Testimonials to our mechanical superiority abound on every hand. 
The Mechanical World, of London, a great trades organ of England, 
says that the United States has the best machinery and tools in the 
world. The French Minister of Commerce has made public an 
official report to him that the superiority of tools used here, and the 
attention to details too often neglected in Europe, are elements of 
great danger to the supremacy of European industries. 

What the late President Garfield said of our great Centennial 
Exposition, I doubt not, will be proclaimed of the World's Fair of 
1893. In a speech in Congress, in 1878, General Garfield observed : 

Let it be remembered that twenty-two per cent of all the laboring people of 
this country are artisans engaged in manufactures. Their culture has been fos- 
tered by our laws. It is their pursuits and the skill which they developed that 
produced the glory of our Centennial Exposition. To them the country owes the 
splendor of the position it holds before the world more than to any equal number 
of our citizens. 

As more than twenty-two per cent of our laboring people are now 
skilled artisans, and are now more advanced and skillful and pros- 
perous than ever, so am I confident that the glory of our great 
Columbian Exposition at Chicago Avill be attributed in a larger de- 
gree to them than to any or all other forces. It is our glory that the 
American laborer is more intelligent and better paid than his foreign 
competitor, and so far no call upon his greater inventive skill and 
genius has been made in vain. Herbert Spencer has testified, " Be- 
yond question, in respect to mechanical appliances the Americans are 
ahead of all other nations." Superior tools would alone give us no 
small advantage, but the possession of the best machinery implies 
much more, namely, that we have also the best mechanics in the 
world. 

There are some things we shoitld remember, however. Nothing 
is cheap which enforces idleness upon our own people. Invention 
does not follow idleness. Nothing is cheap which permits to slumber 
in our hills and mountains the rich raw materials that only await the 
manipulation of man to produce untold wealth. The first duty of a 
nation is to enact those laws which will give to its citizens the widest 
opportunity for labor and the best rewards for work done. You can 
not have the best citizenship without these encouragements; and with 



\ 



560 SPEECHES AND ADDRESSES OF WILLIAM McKINLEY. 

US the best citizenship is required to secure the best Government, the 
best laws, and their wise administration. Our citizenship must be 
protected in every way possible, for upon it rests the permanency 
and glory of our institutions. 

If I viere called upon to say what, in my opinion, constitutes the 
strength and security and integrity of the Government, I should say 
the American home. It lies at the very beginning and foundation of 
a pure National life. The good home makes the good citizen, and 
the good citizen makes wholesome public sentiment. Good govern- 
ment follows. It matters little what our occupations may be. Every 
employment is honorable which is an honest employment. The capi- 
tal of one may be in his hand and eye, the capital of another his brain 
and intellectual equipment. Both are equally honorable and useful 
and necessary. We need them both. We can not get on without 
both. Both contribute to National and individual welfare and the 
advancement and elevation of the people. There are many skilled 
workmen who earn more money than the average member of the 
learned professions. The family of the workingman is the unit of 
our National welfare. 

Many of the men who labored with their hands thirty years ago 
are now at the head of the great industrial institutions of the country. 
In the railroad service, the best and most responsible positions are 
now filled not from the ranks of capital but from the ranks of labor. 
The system of promotion upon merit is fast becoming the rule of 
the great corporations ; so that skill and industry and adaptation to 
work are almost certain to secure advancement and promotion and 
independence. Good places are always open to beckon the industrious 
and intelligent employe. 

The great editors of the country commenced at the very bottom. 
When Horace Greeley founded the New York Tribune, in 1841, 
among the employes at eight and ten dollars a week were George 
William Curtis, the gifted editor of Harper's Weekly ; Mr. George 
Jones, lately deceased, who became the editor and proprietor of the 
New York Times, a great and influential journal ; and Charles A. 
Dana, who is now the brilliant editor and proprietor of the New York 
Sun. The men who control and manage other great enterprises of 
the country also, are, in the main, men who commenced in the shop 
or on the farm as laborers. And the conditions of labor are con- 
stantly being improved. With shorter hours, better tools and machin- 
ery, security and protection from accident, bad buildings, and bad 
ventilation, strictly enjoined by law upon those who employ labor. 



THE AMERICAN WORKINGMAN. 5^1 

we have much which is the cause of congratulation. But much still 
remains to be done for the benefit and amelioration of labor. Im- 
provement in every walk of life is the outgrowth of thought and 
discussion and ambition. We do better as we are better ourselves. 

The ideals of yesterday are the truths of to-day. What we hope for 
and aspire to now we will realize in the future if we are prudent and 
careful. If right is on our side, and we pursue resolute but orderly 
methods to secure our end, it is sure to come. There is no better 
way of securing what we want, and what we believe is best for us and 
those for whom we have a care, than the old way of striving earnestly 
and honestly for it. The labor of the country constitutes its strength 
and its wealth, and the better that labor is conditioned, the higher its 
rewards, the wider its opportunities, and the greater its comforts and 
refinements, the better will be our civilization, the more sacred will 
be our homes, the more capable our children, and the nobler will be 
the destiny which awaits us. We can only walk in the path of right, 
resolutely insisting on the right, always being sure at the same time 
that we are right ourselves, and time will bring the victories. To 
labor is accorded its full share of the advantages of a Government 
like ours. None more than the laborers enjoy the benefits and 
blessings which our free institutions make. This country differs in 
many and essential respects from other countries, and, as is often 
said, it is just this difference which makes us the best of all. 
It is the difference between our political equality and the caste con- 
ditions of other nations which elevates and enlightens the Ameri- 
can laborer, and inspires within him a feeling of pride and manhood. 
It is the difference in recompense received by him for his labor and 
that received by the foreigner which enables him to acquire for him- 
self and his a cheery home and the comforts of life. It is the differ- 
ence between our educational facilities and the less liberal opportuni- 
ties for learning in other lands which vouchsafes to him the priceless 
privilege of rearing a happy, intelligent, and God-fearing family. 
The great Matthew Arnold has truly said, " America holds the fu- 
ture." It is in commemoration of the achievements of labor in the 
past that Labor Day was established. It was eminently fitting that 
the people should turn aside on one day of the year from their usual 
vocations and rejoice together over the unequaled prosperity that has 
been vouchsafed to them. The triumphs of American labor can not 
easily be recited nor its trophies enumerated. But, great as they 
have been in the past, I am fully convinced that there are richer 
rewards in store for labor in the future. 



THE OHIO YICTORY OF 1891. 

Speech at the EEPUBLicA]sr Jollification of the Old Eight- 
eenth Congressional District at Canton, Ohio, Satur- 
day, November 14, 1891. 

[From the Canton Repository.'] 

My Fellow-Citizens : I am very mucli indebted to the people 
of Canton and to the people of my old Congressional district for this 
cordial welcome. I can not forget if I would, and would not if I 
could, the kindness and generosity and devotion of the people of this 
city and county, and of the counties which constituted my old Con- 
gressional district ; and I need hardly assure you that I rejoice Avith 
you to-night over the splendid victory of last Tuesday. [Cheers.] It 
was won after a long campaign, after the issues presented by the two 
great parties had been fully discussed and fairly considered before the 
people and by the people. It was determined purely upon party 
principles, representing party differences, and to my mind was the 
logical and natural outcome of a clear, painstaking, and concise pres- 
entation of the issues involved. Indeed, I can recall no campaign 
wherein the real issues involved have been so squarely pat before the 
voters of the State as in the one whose successful termination we are 
now celebrating. The American system or policy of a protective 
tariff has been fully vindicated, and the policy of a sound and uncor- 
rupted currency has also again signally triumphed in Ohio. The 
Buckeye State has spoken with emphasis for both, and her voice and 
vote will resound in every quarter of this great country. [Great ap- 
plause.] Passion, bitter personalities, and narrow prejudices had no 
place in the campaign just closed. It was singularly free from all. 
Extraneous and unimportant questions were altogether eliminated ; 
side issues were rejected. The lines were tightly drawn. Nothing 
crept in to divert the public mind from the actual issues involved, 
and the verdict of last Tuesday is, therefore, the full and free will of 
our people upon great National questions affecting every home and 
hearthstone in the United States. [Cheers.] I have said it was a 



THE OHIO VICTORY OF 1891. 5(53 

long campaign. It commenced as early as the 17th day of June last, 
and continued uninterruptedly until the votes were finally counted 
on election night, Tuesday, November 10th. But it was a glorious 
campaign. The people were in it from start to finish. [Loud 
cheers.] They were fully awake to the situation, and the greatest 
interest was evinced all along the line up to the close. We celebrate 
their verdict and victory to-night. The result is full of significance 
and encouragement. 

We have elected the entire Republican State ticket by sweeping 
pluralities. [Great applause.] We have elected both branches of 
the Legislature by an unprecedented Republican majority. [Ap- 
plause.] We have carried all the close and doubtful counties. Now 
we will elect a Republican United States Senator. [Applause.] We 
will district the State for Congressional purposes under the new cen- 
sus of 1890— and upon lines, too, that will be fair to the majority, 
fair to the minority, fair to all the people. [Loud cheers.] We will, 
moreover, continue to choose Presidential electors in the good old- 
fashioned way of the fathers— by the State at large— just as we have 
always done ever since Ohio had a State government. Our glorious 
Commonwealth will neither be Michiganized nor Mexicanized, but 
the force and majesty of the will of the majority, as registered at the 
polls, will continue supreme in Ohio. [Great applause.] Ohio has 
by this election declared in unmistakable terms her opposition 
to free trade [cheers], or a revenue tariff, and stands immovable for 
the great American doctrine under which we have enjoyed such 
unexampled prosperity, under which labor and genius and skill are 
better rewarded than in any other quarter of the globe, and under 
which we have achieved the very first rank among all nations in 
manufacturing, mining, and agriculture. Our State has determined 
that her labor and industry shall be protected from ruinous competi- 
tion with foreign countries; and, further, that she wants no clipped 
or corrupt dollars with which to measure the exchanges of her peo- 
ple, their products, and their labor. [Cheers.] And now, my fellow- 
citizens, having won the victory solely upon these great questions 
and party issues, let us use it fairly and honorably, that we may 
deserve the continued confidence and good will of the people. 
[Cheers.] I thank you, in behalf of the triumphant party, for this 
demonstration of public approval and these manifestations of popular 
satisfaction. I thank you, one and all, also, very heartily, for your 
personal good will and good wishes, and bid you good night. [Re- 
newed and long-continued applause.] 



THE STATE OF OHIO. 

Address in Response to Toast at the Lincoln Banquet 
OF the Ohio Republican League, at Columbus, Ohio, 
February 12, 1892. 

[From the Ohio State Journal.'] 

Mr. Toastmaster, and Gentlemen of the Ohio Repub- 
lican League : It is recorded that during one of the gloomiest 
periods of the Revohition an American general asked what should be 
done if the king's troops should drive the Continental Army from 
the States. Washington answered, " We shall retire to the Ohio Val- 
ley, and there we will be free ! " Ohio was thus early held as a home 
for the free and a haven for the oppressed. Since 1787 there has 
never been a moment of time that the territory of Ohio has not 
been consecrated to freedom, and its citizens its strongest advocates 
and adherents. [Applause.] Ohio people may indulge in a good 
deal of self-praise, and it may not always be prudent or opportune, 
but I think no student of Ohio history will assert that it is unrea- 
sonable and without justification. A distinguished Senator from 
Massachusetts declared, not many years ago, that he could not help 
applying to Ohio the proud boast of Pericles concerning Athens : 
" Athens alone, among her contemporaries, is superior to the report 
of her." Of how few Hellenes could be said, as of them, that their 
deeds, when weighed in the balance, have been found equal to their 
fame ! 

Ohio was the seventeenth State to be admitted into the Union, 
but for fifty years it ranked third in population, wealth, and indus- 
trial activity. By the census of 1810, reckoning Maine, then part of 
Massachusetts, as a member of the Union, Ohio was the thirteenth 
State, according to magnitude of population ; in 1820, the fifth ; in 
1830, the fourth ; and in 1840, 1850, 18G0, 1870, and 1880, the third 
State. The recent census places her fourth in population, giving to 
Illinois Ohio's old rank. I have seen that accounted for in this way : 



THE STATE OP OHIO. 565 

That at the time the census was taken many Ohio people were abroad, 
while many others, traveling through Chicago on business [laughter], 
were found by the census-taker and counted, in the population of 
that inland metropolis. [Laughter and cheers,] The early popula- 
tion of Ohio was made up of New-Englanders, Virginians, settlers 
from the Middle States, Germans, French, and Irish, and it would 
have been difficult to procure a better class of inhabitants. The old 
States sent many of their best, while the foreigners who came to our 
Western Avilderness were also very desirable citizens. Washington, in 
a letter written in 1788, declared : 

No colony in America was ever settled under such favorable auspices as that 
•which has been commenced along the Muskingum. Information, prosperity, and 
strength will be its characteristics. I know many of the settlers personally, and 
there never were men better calculated to promote the welfare of any community. 
If I were a young man just preparing to begin life, or had a family to make pro- 
vision for, I know of no country where I would rather fix my habitation. 

Lafayette, too, when a list of Ohio pioneers was read to him, in 
1825, at Marietta, proudly said : 

I know them all ; I saw them at Brandywine, Yorktown, and Rhode Island. 
They were the bravest of the brave. 

Such a population insured a good beginning, and with the declara- 
tion of the great Ordinance of 1787 for the organization of the North- 
west Territory, gave an earnest of Ohio's matchless future : 

There shall be neither slavery nor involuntary servitude in said Territory 
otherwise than in the punishment of crimes whereof the party shall have been 
duly convicted. 

This was the language of the compact — the voice of freedom, the 
cry of conscience. From the beginning Ohio set her face toward lib- 
erty. She believed in the largest freedom and in the widest oppor- 
tunity and possibility for individual effort. She has never reversed 
her face, nor turned backward in her pathway. She has been a lover 
of freedom and the Union from her beginning. She was created a 
free State. No slave was ever born on her soil, no serf ever dwelt 
there. [Loud applause.] The first attempt at treason, presented in 
the conspiracy of Aaron Burr, was met with prompt and effective 
action. Governor Tiffin sent a message to the Legislature calling 
for authority to act in the emergency. Authority was given the Gov- 
ernor to cause the arrest of all persons engaged in the conspiracy, and 
giving him power to call out the militia for that purpose. Thus this 
conspiracy against the Republic was met by the same prompt, earnest. 



566 SPEECHES AND ADDRESSES OF WILLIAM McKINLEY. 

and patriotic answer from the loyal people of the State that has char- 
acterized them in every assault against the authority of the Govern- 
ment of the United States since. In the second war with England, 
although our entire vote for Governor in 1812 was but 19,752, there 
were more than 20,000 Ohio soldiers enlisted in the American army. 
[Applause.] In the great Civil War Ohio's contribution of troops 
was almost equal to her voting population, while eighty-five out of 
every thousand of her 320,000 enlisted soldiers gave their lives as a 
precious sacrifice for the Union. [Great applause.] 

William Dennison, the first w^ar Governor, to whom this State 
and the country are much more indebted than his contemporaries 
were wont to acknowledge, said at the outbreak of hostilities, " Ohio 
must lead in the war," aiid no State for a single day, in all those 
years of dreadful conflict, disputed Ohio's leadership. [Applause.] 
To those grand men, David Tod and John Brough, also, much of the 
State's prominence is unquestionably due. Governor Tod especially 
behaved handsomely and most patriotically under very trying circum- 
stances. He was an able, honest, and fearless Executive, a public serv- 
ant whose official conduct deserved, as it received, the approbation 
of all loyal people. No State can boast three better war Governors, 
and certainly none a grander army than Ohio sent to the front. 
[Applause.] Our soldiers made their impress upon every one of the 
grand divisions of the grandest army of free men ever mustered. Our 
volunteers were upon every field and in the forefront of every battle, 
and our matchless commanders, whose names without mention rise 
to every lip, have encircled the globe with their fame. [Applause, 
and cheers for Grant, Sherman, and Sheridan.] It may be regard- 
ed as an insignificant fact, but it was in reality a grand accom- 
plishment, and one of which we all should be proud, that the first 
regular organization in the country for the relief of Union soldiers 
through Aid Societies was formed and organized April 20, 1861, in 
the city of Cleveland. Ohio was prompt and effective in that as in 
all other patriotic efforts, pointing the way for the Nation with un- 
erring zeal and foresight. History records how quickly and grandly 
her example was followed, and how great the good that was accom- 
plished. 

Ohio has not only been strong in her patriotism and devotion to 
liberty, but her civil administrations, from Tiffin's first term, have, as 
a rule, been distinguished for conservatism and strength, integrity 
and dignity. Her judiciary has been able, pure, and learned. Its 
decisions have commanded confidence in every State and Territory of 



THE STATE OF OHIO. 557 

the Union. Hon. Eichard A. Harrison, of this city, himself a dis- 
tinguished lawyer, said not long ago, on a banquet occasion : 

Is there any State in the Union that ever had a bar of greater men either as 
lawyers or statesmen, than the bar of which Judge Thurman was one of the most 
conspicuous members ? [Applause.] 

Their names best answer his inquiry. The Ohio bar in Judge 
Thurman's time was graced by Hammond, Burnet, Chase, Waite, 
Ewing, Corwin, McLean, Boynton, Swan, Eanney, Stanton, Swayne, 
Stanley Matthews, Aaron F. Perry, Groesbeck, Day, Hoadly, Storer, 
and many others of exceptional strength and ability. There have 
been five Ohio men upon the Supreme Bench of the United States, 
two of them reaching the station of Chief Justice of the greatest 
judicial tribunal of the world, and death claiming a third and possibly 
greater before he could assume that exalted station. 

In science, art, music, poetry, and letters, Ohio has won a lead- 
ing place. In journalism she has been conspicuous. The Bulga- 
rian Liberator, as he is called, whose fame as a correspondent is in- 
ternational, whose life was a chivalrous romance, whose pen was 
weighted with power and might, the heroic MacGahan, was a Buckeye 
boy. [Applause.] His body, transferred from the ancient seat of 
Eastern empire, now rests among the rugged hills of his native coun- 
ty of Perry, where he spent his boyhood, and where was spent the 
boyhood of the greatest cavalryman of the Civil War— the dashing and 
intrepid Sheridan. [Renewed applause.] Kennan, also, the daring 
traveler, whose articles and lectures on Eussian cruelty in Siberia have 
startled two continents, is a product of northern Ohio. And Edison, 
the Wizard of Menlo, most practical of scientists and greatest of 
electricians, first saw the light in an Ohio country village. The proud 
old State may well risk her rank in that field upon the work of this 
illustrious son, but to Edison she can add Brush, and to Brush the 
great Dr. Mendenhall, foremost of professors in electrical science. 
In education Ohio has been no laggard. Her public schools and 
colleges are her pride. She expends in a single year for public in- 
struction more than any other of the States of the Union except New 
York and Illinois. More than one tenth of all the money expended 
in the United States for school purposes is expended by Ohio, and 
she has a larger percentage of attendance upon instruction, according 
to population, than any other State of the Union. [Applause.] 

The first prominence Ohio gained in National politics was in the 
election of William Henry Harrison. She has had two Presidents 



568 SPEECHES AND ADDRESSES OP WILLIAM McKINLEY. 

since, and can fairly claim two others ; but if we can not wholly claim 
that great distinction, we can at least fairly divide the honor with 
Illinois and Indiana — for here both Ulysses S. Grant and Benjamin 
Harrison were born, reared, and educated. No other State in the 
Union has made a more indelible impression upon the Senate of 
the United States than has our beloved Commonwealth. Worth- 
ington and Morrow, Tappan and Allen, Ewing and Morris, Cor- 
win and Chase, Pugli and Wade, Sherman and Thurman, Matthews 
and Pendleton — what State can boast stronger men? Wade, rug- 
ged and resistless in his convictions, with his colleague Giddings, 
in the House, stood on the very outpost of liberty, fearless and 
defiant. They Avere the pioneers of freedom ; and the liberty which 
we enjoy to-day, and which is so universal in our country, and which 
represents more than any other civilization the hopes and aspirations 
of mankind, will be forever associated with their great names. 

During the Civil War, Wade was at the head of the Committee on 
the Conduct of the War in the Senate. Sherman was at the head of 
that Committee upon which rested the duty of raising the vast sums 
required for the prosecution of the war. At the other end of the 
Capitol were Schenck and Garfield, Shellabarger, Ashley, Delano, and 
Bingham. Schenck was Chairman of the Committee on the Conduct 
of the War, and was on the Committee on Ways and Means. Garfield 
was at the head of the Committee on Military Affairs; Bingham, 
Chairman of the Judiciary Committee ; and Ashley at the head of the 
Committee on Territories, under whose administration West Virginia, 
Nevada, and Nebraska were admitted to the sisterhood of States — 
jointly controlling the important legislation of that most eventful 
period. It was Ashley — and we have almost forgotten it — the veteran 
statesman, who reported the bill for the abolition of slavery in the 
District of Columbia [applause], and he was the first Representative 
to introduce the amendment to the Constitution to abolish slavery in 
the United States, and under his management on the floor it was 
adopted by the House of Representatives. [Applause, and cheers for 
Governor Ashley, who sat upon the stage.] 

Stanton, in the war office, stood like a sturdy oak, unswayed and 
unbending. Upon him Lincoln rested, and his strong nature im- 
pressed itself upon the armies of the Union. He moved with but one 
purpose, actuated by the single motive of patriotism. That purpose 
he expressed in 1862, when he said : 

For myself, turning neither to the right hand nor to the left, serving no 
man and at enmity with none, I shall strive to perform my whole duty in the 



THE STATE OF OHIO. 569 

grca,t work before me. Mistakes and faults I will no doubt commit, but the pur- 
pose of my action shall be single to the public good. [Great applause.] 

Chase was in the Treasury Department, devising and planning for 
the public credit and for the enormous revenue required daily to keep 
in motion the operations of the Army ; and for a time still another 
Ohio man, Governor Dennison, was in the Cabinet of the martyr 
President. It should not be forgotten also that when Mr. Chase re- 
signed from the Treasury the first man in the country to whom Presi- 
dent Lincoln turned as his successor was ex-Governor Tod, of Ohio, 
who declined tlie proffered portfolio. 

Lincoln early recognized the political importance of Ohio — 
recognized it before his own nomination and election in 18G0. He 
was in this State during the campaign of 1859, making one speech at 
Cincinnati and another at Columbus. These speeches largely con- 
tributed to Eepublican success ; as the Chairman of the Republican 
Committee expressed it : " They were regarded as luminous and tri- 
umphant expositions of the doctrines of the Republican party." 

It is fitting for Ohio Republicans to celebrate the birthday of Lin- 
coln. They contributed somewhat at least to bring to him the op- 
portunity which has made his name immortal. In 18G0 the Repub- 
lican National Convention was held in the city of Chicago. The third 
ballot had been reached, 465 votes had been cast ; 233 votes were 
necessary to a choice. Lincoln had 231-|-, Seward 180, and the re- 
mainder were for Chase and others. Lincoln lacked one vote and a 
half to give him the requisite number to make him the candidate of 
the party — the second National candidate for President the Repub- 
lican party had ever named. Supreme silence followed the conclusion 
of this ballot ; voices were hushed, but for an instant only. During 
this instant, my former fellow-townsman, David K. Cartter, a dele- 
gate from Ohio, mounted his chair and transferred four votes from 
Salmon P. Chase to Abraham Lincoln [applause, and cheers for 
Lincoln and Cartter], and amid the huzzas of that crowded his- 
toric wigwam Lincoln was made the nominee of the Republican 
party. Some other State might have done it ; some other State 
doubtless would have done it ; but the fact remains that it was Ohio 
that did accomplish it, that did give Lincoln the nomination. [Ap- 
plause.] As Ohio's name is linked with that of Lincoln in the strug- 
gles and sacrifices for the Union, so also is it known in the pathos of 
the death of the great Liberator. At his bedside stood his faithful 
Secretary of War ; and when, in the gray of that awful morning, the 
spirit of the immortal Lincoln ascended, the solemn silence was 



570 SPEECHES AND ADDRESSES OP WILLIAM McKLSUEr. 

broken bj Stanton, vho Feverently said, ~31>ir ie Monffg Ut He 
affes!^ [Appknse-] 

Gentlemen of the Ohio Bepablican League, ve hare mnch cause 
for exaltation and encomagement — much to boast oL The past of 
our State, glorious in achievement, should fill us with serious reflec- 
tion to-night, and inspire us vith a resolution to guaid with sacred 
Tigilance all that has been won, and bv worthy aims and worthy ac- 
tion secure ?rand things for the future. In tae glories of Ohio her 
Bepublicans have had their full share. They have contributed their 
part ; they must have a share in her future glories, and make full con- 
tribution theieta We can not survive upon what our predeossfHTS 
have done. We must win success by what we do ourselves; and 
while having care that nothing of good in the past is lost, we must 
have a further and greater care that justice and righteousness shall 
characteriae our present purposes and make a benefcent impress 
upon the future. [Great applause, and cheers for McKinley.J 



OBERLIX COLLEGE. 

Address at the Axxual Dixneb of the Cletelaxd ALUMyr 
OF Obeelix College, CLEVELAJfD, Ohio, Mabch 3, 1892. 

Me. Toastmastze : I am indebted to your presiding officer [Mr. 
Daniel P. Eells] for the honor of meeting to-night with the alumni 
and former students of Oberlin College. This gives to me, I assure 
von, especial gratification and pleasure. I have had opportunity for 
many years of knowing the work your college has been accomplish- 
ing in the field of higher and more liberal education. Established in 
1833 — nearly sixty years ago — with forty-four pupils, it now bears 
upon its rolls more than 1,400. 

Oberlin village and Oberlin College came together. The college 
was the occasion of the town, the town only the incident of the col- 
lege. From small beginnings you have reached a rank scarcely sec- 
ond to the best institutions of the country or the world. You rank 
fifth in number of students, exceeded only by Harvard, Yale, Colum- 
bia, and Ann Arbor. You have sent forth more than 2,500 graduates. 
From a constituency limited to a few States you have extended your 
field of usefulness into practically every State and Territory of the 
Union. The munificent gifts which you are continually receiving 
are high tribute not only to the past but to the present of Oberlin. 
Your alumni are in every department of human industry and in 
every field of human activity in public and in private life, all bearing 
cheerful testimony in their own lives to the thoroughness and charac- 
ter of their Alma Mater. You have a right to be proud to-night of 
the achievements of old Oberlin. It is unrivaled in university an- 
nals. Yours is a proud history, proud because of its victories — victo- 
ries achieved through suffering and sacrifice — victories won against 
prejudice and passion in the minds of the people, prejudice ingrafted 
in public law and enthroned in power. The prejudices which pre- 
vailed against the institution in the early days of its history can hardly 
be credited now. In 184:1 many petitions were presented to the Legis- 
37 



572 SPEECHES AND ADDRESSES OF WILLIAM McKINLEY. 

latiire for the repeal of the charter of Oberlin College; and in 1844 
Mr. McNulty, of the House, introduced a bill to revoke the charter 
and deprive the institution of its corporate privileges. At one time 
the Legislature defeated a bill to incorporate the Dialectic Association 
of the college, because of the great prejudices which then existed 
against anything bearing the name of the Oberlin Collegiate Insti- 
tute. It is due to history, however, to say that the vote which de- 
feated the bill was afterward reconsidered, and an act passed granting 
the requisite authority. 

In the winter of 1834-'35 Oberlin College was the first to admit 
colored students. This was a mighty and majestic step forward, and 
it was never retraced. It favored, from its beginning, coeducation. 
It occupied the very outpost of liberty ; it has remained always upon 
the skirmish line. It is said that in 1840 one of the young students 
of the university said to father Keep, " When will slavery be abol- 
ished ? " He answered, with the confidence born of his own faith and 
courage, " In about twenty years " ; and that which for so long was 
only hope and prayer, became performance and fulfillment almost 
within the prophecy of the venerable teacher. The institution was 
dedicated by its founders not only to the most liberal education, 
which should include both sexes, all classes, and all races, but was 
consecrated to liberty and equality among men. These great fun- 
damental ideas have never been for a moment lost sight of since. 
They have been adhered to in trial and triumph. What influence 
Oberlin College has had upon the Kepublic and its citizenship and 
institutions no man can tell. It hated slaA-ery and proclaimed it de- 
fiantly. No slave was ever returned from its corporation into bond- 
age, and no slave ever came within its gates who was not welcomed 
and protected. The case of John Price, the colored boy who was 
seized by the United States officers and rescued by the citizens of 
Oberlin, is now almost forgotten history. That was in 1858, and the 
whole authority of the General Government was enlisted for the re- 
turn of that boy to slavery ; and yet, in less than five years, the spirit 
of Oberlin spread throughout the North. Then came the proclama- 
tion of Abraham Lincoln that made all slaves free, free to go to every 
corner of the country within the jurisdiction of the flag. They were 
earnest, God-fearing men who built your great university ; built it 
not alone for themselves and their immediate descendants, but for 
posterity. 

The students of Oberlin College were some of the pioneers in the 
early struggles to make Kansas a free State. They went wherever 



OBERLIN COLLEGE. 573 

freedom was assailed ; tliey literally flocked to that Territory which 
the South had said should be dedicated to slavery. Their teachers 
and their preachers went forth from your institution to teach the truth 
and justice of the Declaration of Independence. Your pupils were in 
every department of the Army. No more patriotic community ex- 
isted anywhere in the United States than Oberlin. Your first con- 
tribution was a company to the old historic Seventh Ohio, which Cap- 
tain Shurtleff, one of your jDrofessors, commanded. You made con- 
tributions to other regiments and to other arms of the service, and 
every boy or man who went from your institution understood exactly 
what he was fighting for. Every shot he fired was directed by con- 
science and for freedom. He fought not only for the Union as it was, 
but the Union as it is, with slavery destroyed and freedom national- 
ized. I have read somewhere that my old friend Prof. Monroe, with 
whom I served so many years in Congress, a man of peace and op- 
posed to contention, really made the first war speech that was ever 
made in your village, and made it in the old First Church, urging the 
boys to go forth and fight the battles of their country, and that it was 
his earnest appeal that led to the organization of the first company 
that went from the walls of your institution. It was from your in- 
stitution General Cox, the distinguished soldier and statesman, went 
forth, who became a Major General, and was the first brigade com- 
mander under whom I served. Hosts of others are prominent in 
business, in education, in the pulpit, in literature and in science. 
The old names should be dear to the alumni and friends of the in- 
stitution : Asa Mahan, John Jay Shipherd, Stewart, Shepard, Wal- 
do, Dascomb, Finney, Dr. John Morgan, Eev. Henry and John P. 
Cowles, with many others, contemporaries and successors. These 
names should not only be remembered and honored at your reun- 
ions, but should be dearly cherished by you and by the friends of 
freedom everywhere. It is a great distinction to be on your rolls. I 
want to congratulate you all on your achievements, and 1 join with all 
in urging that a fund be raised to enable this distinguished pro- 
fessor [Dr. G. Frederick "Wright] to carry on his work. Do not give 
up your peculiarities. They are excellences peculiar to your own 
institution. Stick to them I 



ISSUES MAKE PAETIES. 

Address at the First National Convention of Republican 
College Clubs, at Ann Arbor, Mich., May 17, 1892. 

Mr. President and Gentlemen : I am glad to meet the Repub- 
lican clubs of the colleges and universities of the United States, as- 
sembled in their representative capacity here to-night. This is the 
first assemblage of the kind ever undertaken, and I trust it will be but 
the beginning of successive meetings of the same character to be held 
annually in some college center of the country. This will be a mem- 
orable occasion for one thing, if for no other, in that it is the first. 
I hope it may be memorable for another and a more important reason — 
that it will be the seed-planting of practical political thought which 
shall continue to grow and find root in every educational institution in 
the country. There is no such school for political education as the 
college and the university. What is inculcated here penetrates every 
corner of the country where the college man goes ; and where is there 
a spot to which the college man does not go ? And wherever he goes 
he is a mighty force in making and molding public sentiment. It 
was therefore a conception worthy of the college boy and man to or- 
ganize these clubs, within their own college precincts, for political 
discussion and education, that they may go forth well grounded in 
right political principles, prepared to defend their faith, and with an 
increased interest in the welfare of their country, 
"^^arties do not make issues. Issues make parties. We must first 
know what we think and believe, then those who think and believe as 
we do will unite with us in party association. A common conviction 
on public questions leads to the formation of political parties ; a com- 
mon purpose springing from conviction inspires party unity. Polit- 
ical parties are necessary to popular government. They have been 
with us from the beginning, and will remain while our form of gov- 
ernment lasts. They are the agents of popular will. Party names 
may change, but under some title and designation the same ideas and 




ISSUES MAKE PARTIES. 575 

contentions appear to divide them. No student of American politics 
can have failed to note that the convictions and sentiments which led 
to the organization of the earliest political parties, in a great measure 
still control and dominate their successprs. They carry the marks of 
their birth and beginning. They are easily recognizable as related 
to the ancestral parties from which they sprang. The same spirit 
and purpose dominate the Republican and Democratic parties to-day 
that shaped and molded their creation and the creation of those from 
which they sprang. The same great fundamental differences divide 
them ; the same leading-strings draw them. 

Two great ideas came with the creation of the Federal Govern- 
ment by the Convention of 1787 : one was the " National " idea, 
the other was the " States-rights " idea, and from then until now they 
have been fundamental in the creeds of the two great parties. The 
old leaders are their idols still, and from them they draw inspiration. 
Jefferson and Calhoun, Jackson and Tilden, are the names most be- 
loved and cherished by Democrats everywhere. Hamilton and Web- 
ster, Clay and Lincoln, still inspire the highest and best sentiments 
of the Eepublican party, and are the silent but powerful leaders of 
Kepublican thought to-day. The Whig party sprang from the Federal 
party, which for a dozen years administered the general policy of the 
Government as it is administered now. The Eepublican party is the 
lineal descendant of the old Whig party, and included in its organ- 
ization the Liberty, the Anti-Slavery, and the Free-Soil parties. The 
Democratic party sprang from the Anti-Federalist party, and was 
afterward designated for a while as the " Democratic Society," then 
alternated between the names Republican and Democratic, and finally 
adopted its present name, which has long been accepted as the Na- 
tional designation. The chief service of the Democratic party in later 
years has been one of oj^position and obstruction. The two great par- 
ties of to-day are striving to enforce and maintain the public policies 
and keep in active play the principles enunciated by their political 
predecessors and inaugurated by tlie party leaders of a former genera- 
tion. Leaders have differed now and then from party creeds, but 
the creeds have survived the dissenting leaders, and the great parties 
still live. ^ 

The Wilmot Proviso of 1846, which forbade the existence of 
slavery in any part of the territory to be purchased by the money ap- 
propriated in the bill then under consideration, brought together the 
lovers of liberty and the opponents of the further extension of slavery, 
and was the origin and beginning of a powerful political organization. 



576 SPEECHES AND ADDRESSES OF WILLIAM McKINLEY. 

The issue was emphasized in 1853 upon the bill to organize Kansas 
and Nebraska into one Territory, when it was proposed that slavery 
should not be prohibited in the Territories by virtue of the Mis- 
souri Compromise of 1820. From this moment adjustments and com- 
promises were unavailing. Freedom had submitted too long to the 
encroachments of slavery, and would yield no longer. Slavery was 
no longer to be National and freedom sectional. Thereafter freedom 
was to be National, and limitations placed upon slavery. The de- 
mand for " free men, free thought, free speech, and free homes " rang 
through the Nation, and stirred the consciences of the people from 
slumber and indifference to activity and aggression. The issue was 
no longer blinded or concealed, but emphasized in all the political 
struggles which followed thereafter. It was still further emphasized 
in 1859-'60, when in the Senate of the United States the question was 
presented whether the Homestead Bill of the House or the Senate 
Bill for the purchase of Cuba should be considered. Here was pre- 
sented the question of acquiring more territory for the extension of 
slavery, or more free homes for the American people ; and the Senate, 
dominated by the Democratic party, voted for slavery and against 
freedom. The extension of slavery was to them more to be desired 
than the dedication of the public domain to freedom and free men. 
Liberty, justice, and equality are the cardinal principles of the 
Kepublican party, and represent to-day its high purpose as distinct- 
ively as in 1856, when in the city of Philadelphia they were the bugle- 
call and drum-beat of its birth and beginning. Internal improvements 
on land and water are as surely a part of our political handbook as 
in the days when Hamilton and Clay announced and enforced them 
as the true National policy, dictated by patriotism and enlightened 
self-interest. National authority within the Constitution and opposi- 
tion to the supremacy of the States over the Federal Government — 
National as contradistinguished from States rights — stand forth as 
great landmarks of Republican doctrine and policy ; and they at last 
triumphed — triumphed in an awful sacrifice, sealed by the lives of a 
mighty host of patriots. Protection to American industry and Amer- 
ican labor against all the world without is as essential and funda- 
mental in the code of Republican principles as it ever was in the code 
of the old Whig party. Hamilton and Clay on this great question 
still animate the Republican party, direct its conflicts, and share in 
its victories. 

Opposition to all these constitutes the armor and arsenal of the 
Democratic party. They have no other. Their post is one of resist- 



ISSUES MAKE PARTIES. 577 

ance and opposition. They have no line on the frontier of advanced 
thought. They are behind their battered and much-weakened in- 
trenchments, and have not been out of them but once for more than 
thirty years. They stand in the way. They obstruct the progress 
and well-being and unification of the country. They were against 
the Homestead Law ; they were against any limitation upon slavery 
in the new Territories ; they were against the admission of Kansas as 
a free State. Freedom asserted itself in that great Commonwealth, 
when assailed, and triumphed at last in blood. The attitude of the 
Democratic party in the last war as a National organization was for 
" peace at any price," but countless thousands of its own members 
joined in the mighty effort to preserve the Union. The party was 
against the Eeconstruction measures — the Thirteenth, Fourteenth, and 
Fifteenth Amendments to the Constitution ; they were against the 
greenback, the bonds, the resumption of specie payments; against 
sound money ; against a protective tariff. If you know anything that 
they have not been against, which the Republicans have advocated, 
you have observed what has escaped me. They are now and long 
have been against an honest ballot and a fair count ; against civil- 
service reform ; againstclean city and municipal government. 

They are now for " tariff reform," and against the protective tariff 
of the Eepublican party. What is tariff reform, so called ? What 
does it, in fact, mean? Can anybody tell us? What part of the 
existing tariff is to be " reformed," and how ? Is there a voter in this 
country who knows ? Let us be frank with each other, and deal no 
longer with meaningless phrases. Has Mr. Cleveland fashioned it 
into form ? No ! You may study all he has said upon the subject 
from his earliest published expression in Albany, when he said he 
" did not know anything about the tariff," to his latest effort in Rhode 
Island, and you are absolutely uninformed and unenlightened as to its 
meaning. You turn away from all he has said, or written, ignorant 
of the thing called tariff reform. Is Mr. Mills more lucid ? Yes, and 
more courageous ; but we are still in darkness and confusion, because 
Mr. Springer, who is temporarily at the head of the tariff-reform 
party in the House, differs totally and radically from him. Where 
will you go for light? Will you go to the present Democratic 
majority in the House of Representatives, which, it is said, was 
elected distinctively upon the issue and to execute the principles of 
tariff reform ? What does it present ? What is its plan ? Here it 
is: Tin plate free, and steel sheets, from which it is made, tariffed — 
that is, the raw material tariffed, and the finished product free. Free 



578 SPEECHES AND ADDRESSES OP WILLIAM McKINLEY. 

wool to the manufacturer, and tariffed goods to the consumer ; free 
cotton ties to the cotton States, and tariffed hoop iron to the rest of 
the States, are their symbols of tariff reform. That being all, what do 
you think of it? How do you like it? Is this the sum total of tariff- 
reform effort ? Is this the best the reformers can offer ? If so, then 
tariff reform is a sham and a fraud and a delusion. The propositions 
of the Democratic majority in the House are illogical and indefensi- 
ble, from whatever standpoint we view the tariff. They present the 
most odious forms of class legislation. They are narrow and sectional, 
and embody no principle worthy to be termed a National policy. If 
the thing called tariff reform has any meaning or mission, the people 
of the country are entitled to know it. I have been asking for many 
years of the tariff reformers that they shall indicate to the coun- 
try what they propose to do. The protectionists have embodied in 
public law their design and purpose. It is not concealed under mean- 
ingless phrases. The world knows it. It exists as a fact. Why will 
not the opponents of this system deal as fairly with the public, and 
announce exactly their schedule of tariff rates upon the thousands of 
foreign products which are imported into the United States ? What 
will they make free and what will they make dutiable ; and what will 
be the rate of duty which they will impose under their so-called sys- 
tem upon imported goods ? The trusting people are entitled to know, 
but nobody will tell them, because nobody knows. 

We have had, since the close of the war, three general tariff meas- 
ures proposed by a Democratic majority in the House. All of them 
are as unlike as the American tariff law is unlike the English tariff 
law, none framed upon the same principle ; none with the same rates 
of duty on imported goods ; none of them with the same free list ; 
but all of them constructed by tariff reformers. The present House 
was unwilling — preceding the Presidential election, which everybody 
confesses is to be waged upon the tariff issue — to disclose to its constit- 
uents and the voters of the country its real purpose. It was afraid 
of itself, and has confessed its infirmity by declining to present to the 
House a full scheme for tariff revision and tariff reform. It has con- 
tented itself with a stray shot here and there. It has been firing at 
random. It has been an assault with popguns, the effort being to 
make a great deal of noise and hit and hurt nothing ; and it has suc- 
ceeded. Its warfare has neither been pleasing to its friends nor dan- 
gerous to its enemies. Infirmity has not only characterized its assault 
upon the tariff, but the party has shown that it is equally incapable 
and insincere in its dealing with the silver question. With a two- 



ISSUES MAKE PARTIES. 579 

thirds majority in the House-, with a party committed by the plat- 
forms of most of the States to the free and unlimited coinage of sil- 
ver, it was unable to carry its purpose into law, although a majority 
of the Democratic members voted that way. The Democratic party 
is a mighty force in negation ; it is weak and trifling in practical 
legislation. It is brave — no, not brave; only blustering — after a 
victory, but loses all its courage in the presence of a great National 
contest. It can boast the statesmanship of destruction, but it lacks 
every element essential to constructive legislation. Its vast majority 
in the House, after five months trial, is convicted before the American 
people as weak and vacillating, as cowardly and cringing, as wanting 
both the capacity and the courage to carry into practical legislation 
what they have professed before the people and upon which they 
allege they won the victory of 1890. They are the party of yesterday 
and the day before ; not of to-day and to-morrow. 

They say "the tariff is a tax." That is a captivating cry. So it 
is a tax ; but whether it is burdensome upon the American people 
depends upon who pays it. If we pay it, why should the foreigners 
object? Why all these objections in England, France, Germany, 
Canada, and Australia, against the tariff law of 1890, if the American 
consumer bears the burdens, and if the tariff is only added to the for- 
eign cost which the American consumer pays ? If they pay it, then 
we do not pay it ; and if the increased tariff has not increased the price 
of commodities upon which the tariff has been advanced, then we 
know we do not pay it. The price of wire nails in Pittsburg is 1.65 
cents per pound ; the tariff is two cents per pound. Who pays that 
tax? It is a fact which I would like to impress upon you, and all of 
you, that our exports during the last twelve months have increased 
15.41 per cent over the preceding twelve months, while British exports 
under free trade decreased for the calendar year 1891, 5.6 per cent. 

One of the surest tests of the prosperity of the people is their 
savings — what they are able to " put by " after they have paid their 
expenses. Tried by this test, the United States holds first rank. 
In Great Britain, with a population of 38,000,000, where free trade 
prevails, there are $536,000,000 deposited in savings banks, or $14 
per capita. In New York, with protected industries and a popu- 
lation of 6,000,000, there are 1550,000,000 deposited in savings banks, 
or %2Q per capita. In Rhode Island the savings are %Vlh per capita ; 
in Massachusetts over $150. In the entire United States the whole 
savings banks deposits amounted in 1890 to $1,524,844,506. But this 
only represents a part of the savings of American workingmen. Mil- 



580 SPEECHES AND ADDRESSES OF WILLIAM McKINLEY. 

lions of dollars are now put in building and loan associations, insur- 
ance companies, benefit associations, and many other places, for future 
safety and use. And yet with all this the laborers of this country, 
because of the high wages assured them by our protective tariff, live 
far better than the workmen of other countries. We are getting on 
better than we ever got on during the revenue-tariff periods of our 
history. We are getting on better than any of our sister nations. 
We have made matchless progress in the thirty-one years of protec- 
tion, and no single year has been more satisfactory than the one just 
passed. Are we to abandon the policy under which we have advanced 
to the first rank in development and prosperity ? I bid my country- 
men to pause and ponder before taking that fatal step. Why should 
we ? Let the theorists and doctrinaires answer. 

England is the only free-trade country in the world. Is there 
anything in her progress and civilization, great as they are, in the 
condition of her masses, in her opportunities and possibilities, to in- 
vite us to turn away from our ancient policy ? No American citizen 
would exchange what we have and enjoy for what England offers. 
Does this revenue- tariff policy offer more work and better wages, 
more opportunities for labor and skill and effort, more possibilities to 
the plain people, more comforts, more independence, or better homes ? 
Let the men who have tried both systems answer. Let those who 
have witnessed with their own eyes the condition of the United States 
and Europe answer. Let those of our countrymen who have felt the 
pinch of the revenue tariff from 18 4G to 1861 upon their own incomes 
and wages, upon their own earnings and investments, answer. Let 
those who are too young to have observed the condition of our coun- 
try during the low-tariff period read its history. If they will, no 
young man will associate himself with that political organization 
which is pledged to fasten that policy upon us again. I need not 
say to you what the world knows : That this country, after nearly 
one third of a century of protection, has reached the proud position 
of being of all the nations of the world the first in manufactures, 
first in mining, first in agriculture, first in invention, and first in 
educational advantages for the masses ; that labor is better rewarded 
here ; that skill and genius command higher returns here ; and that 
the great body of the people have wider and better opportunities for 
advancement here than can be found anywhere else in the wide, wide 
world. Protection builds up ; a revenue tariff tears down. Protec- 
tion brings hope and courage to heart and home ; free trade drives 
them from both. Free trade levels down ; protection levels up. 



NOTIFICATION ADDKESS TO MR. HARRISON. 

At the Executive Mansion in Washington City, D. C, 

June 20, 1892. 

Pkesident Haerison : This Committee, representing every State 
and Territory in the Union, are here to perform the trust committed 
to them by the Republican National Convention which convened at 
Minneapolis on June 7, 1892, of bringing you official notification of 
your nomination as the Republican candidate for President of the 
United States. We need hardly assure you of the pleasure it gives 
us to convey the message from the Republicans of the country to 
their chosen leader. Your nomination was but the registering by the 
Convention of the will of the majority of the Republicans of the 
United States, and has been received in every quarter with profound 
satisfaction. 

In 1888 you were nominated after a somewhat prolonged strug- 
gle, upon a platform which declared with clearness the purposes and 
policies of the party, if intrusted with power, and upon that platform 
you were elected President. You have had the good fortune to wit- 
ness the execution of most of those purposes and policies during the 
administration of which you have been the head, and in which you 
have borne a most conspicuous part. If there has been failure to 
embody into law any one of those purposes or policies, it has been no 
fault of yours. Your administration has more than justified your 
nomination four years ago, and the confidence of the people implied 
by your election. After one of the most careful, successful, and bril- 
liant administrations in our history, you have received a renomina- 
tion, an approval of your work, which must bring to you the keenest 
gratification. To be nominatecl for a second term upon the merits of 
his administration is the highest distinction which can come to an 
American President. The difficult and embarrassing questions which 
confronted your administration have been met with an ability, with a 
fidelity to duty, and with a lofty patriotism which fills the American 



582 SPEECHES AND ADDRESSES OP WILLIAM McKINLEY. 

heart with glowing pride. Your domestic policy has been wise, broad, 
and statesmanlike ; your foreign policy firm, just, and truly Amer- 
ican. These have won the commendation of the thoughtful and con- 
servative, and the confidence of your countrymen, irrespective of 
party ; and will, we hope and believe, insure your triumphant election 
in Xovember. 

We beg to hand to you the platform of principles unanimous- 
ly adopted by the Convention which placed you in nomination. 
It is an American document. Protection, which shall serve the 
highest interests of American labor and American development ; 
reciprocity, which, while seeking the world's markets for our surplus 
products, shall not destroy American wages or surrender American 
markets for products which can be made at home ; honest money, 
which shall rightly measure the labor and exchanges of the people, 
and cheat nobody ; honest elections, which are the true foundation 
of all public authority — these principles constitute for the most part 
the platform, principles to which you have already by word and deed 
given your earnest approval, and of which you stand to-day the ex- 
ponent and representative. These and other matters considered in 
the platform will command and receive your careful consideration. 

I am bidden by my associates, who come from every section of the 
Nation, to assure you of the cordial and hearty support of a harmo- 
nious and united Eepublican party. In conclusion, we desire to ex- 
tend to you our personal congratulations, and to express our gratifica- 
tion at the rare honor paid you by a renomination, with a firm faith 
that the destinies of this great people will be confided to your care 
and keeping for four years longer. 



JULY FOURTH AT LAKESIDE. 

Address before the Baptist Young People's Assembly, at 
Lakeside, Ohio, July 4, 1893. 

Mr. President, Ladies and Gentlemen and Fellow-Citi- 
zens : This is a day of education. Its lessons are those of American 
patriotism. It teaches love of country and obedience to law. It 
awakens patriotic memories ; it unites the past with the present and 
connects both with the future. It is a study and a stimulation. It 
unfolds to the understanding the wisdom of the founders of free gov- 
ernment, and brings to us admiration of their courage and constancy. 
It demonstrates the faith and force of conscience, the strength of a 
just cause, the resistless power of God-fearing and freedom-loving 
men when united and consecrated to the cause of man, which, after 
all, is the cause of God. It illustrates how the few can triumph over 
the many, when the few are moved by the love of justice and liberty, 
carrying the banner of righteousness in the interest of mankind. It 
recalls a race of men who hated oppression and who loved liberty, 
who were willing to give up all, even life, that they might do their 
own thinking, do their own ruling, and worship God according to the 
dictates of their own consciences. These were a race of men who 
recognized no dictator but conscience, no master but God. They an- 
nounced their ultimatum, and won full recognition from a proud and 
unwilling foe. They resolved, and then fought and suffered and sac- 
rificed for what they had deliberately and prayerfully declared were 
their inalienable rights, and at last secured them against an enemy 
which would have appalled and disheartened less heroic men. They 
gave to the world the star of liberty. They enthroned conscience. 
They erected a free altar. They made men free. They dethroned 
the old sovereign and made every man his own sovereign. They in- 
augurated self-government and proclaimed the people king. 

These were the mighty achievements of our ancestors — these 
the mighty results they secured to their race and to mankind. 



584 SPEECHES AND ADDRESSES OF WILLIAM McKINLEY. 

They changed the whole face of the Western Hemisphere and set 
hope and heart in every man's life, and turned human aspirations and 
human destiny into the pathway of light and progress and civiliza- 
tion. What a debt we owe them ! What a debt mankind everywhere 
owes them ! What a debt liberty owes them ! — a debt which can 
never be repaid. We can best show our obligation to these great 
leaders by cherishing the institutions which they established, by pre- 
serving unimpaired the freedom which they secured. Tons of bronze 
of costliest and most patriotic design would fail to record their full 
measure of praise and patriotism and sacrifice. 

Sober, earnest, and at times possibly severe, was the character of 
the Revolutionary father. He was determined. He was serious. To 
have been less serious, he would have fallen short of the great require- 
ments of the contest in which he had staked all. He was neither a 
trifler nor a time-server. He marked out the path of duty and then 
pursued it. His cause was just, and his conscience was linked to 
his cause ; his faith firm and his courage sublime. There was a 
sentiment of reverence for religion, a reliance upon an overruling 
Providence, which marked every step in the Eevolution and the 
formation of the Government. The manifestoes, the proclamations, 
the speeches, the resolutions, the orders of these early patriots — all 
carried a faith in religion and piety which have given character to 
our institutions and National policy ever since. While insisting upon 
the absolute separation of Church and State, religion with our people 
is not abandoned, but commended and will always continue to be. 

When General Washington was inaugurated President of the 
United States for the first time, on April 30, 1789, in the city of 
New York, he uttered these noble words in his Inaugural Address : 

It would be peculiarly improper to omit in this first official act my fervent 
supplication to that Almighty Being who rules over the universe, who presides in 
the councils of nations, and whose providential aids can supply every human de- 
fect, that His benediction may consecrate to the liberties and happiness of the 
people of the United States a Government instituted by themselves for these es- 
sential purposes, and may enable every instrument employed in its administration 
to execute with success the functions allotted to its charge. In tendering this 
homage to the Great Author of every public and private good, I assure myself 
that it expresses your sentiments not less than my own, nor those of my fellow- 
citizens at large less than either. No people can be bound to acknowledge and 
adore the Invisible Hand which conducts the affairs of man more than the people 
of the United States. Every step by which they have advanced to the character of 
an independent Nation seems to have been distinguished by some token of provi- 
dential agency : and in the important Revolution just accomplished, in the system 
of their united government, the tranquil deliberations and voluntary consent of 



JULY FOURTH AT LAKESIDE. 585 

so many distinct communities from which the event has resulted can not be com- 
pared with the means by which most governments have been established without 
some return of pious gratitude, along with a humble anticipation of the future 
blessings which the past seems to presage. These reflections, arising out of the 
present crisis, have forced themselves too strongly on my mind to be suppressed. 
You will join with me, I trust, in thinking that there are none, under the in- 
fluence of which the proceedings of a new and free government can more aus- 
piciously commence. 

The Senate, in making its reply to the President's Inaugural Ad- 
dress, said : 

When we contemplate the rise, progress, and termination of the late war, 
which gave this people a name among the nations of the earth, we are, with you, 
inevitably led to acknowledge and adore the Great Arbiter of the Universe, by 
whom empires rise and fall. 

And then closing : 

We commend to you, sir, the protection of Almighty God, earnestly be- 
seeching Him to long preserve the life so valuable and dear to the people of the 
United States. 

What more befitting beginning for a Government of free people ! 
And, adding its sanction, Congress passed unanimously the following 
resolution : 

Resolved, That after the oath shall have been administered to the I'resi- 
dent, he, attended by the Vice-President and the members of the Senate and the 
House of Representatives, proceed to St. Paul's Chapel to hear divine services to 
be performed by the Chaplain of Congress already appointed. 

And in a body the executive and legislative branches of the Fed- 
eral Government sought the sanctuary and invoked the blessings of the 
Divine Father upon the new Government then launched and the offi- 
cers who were charged with its administration. 

This sentiment of reliance upon Divine Power has marked the 
progress of the Eepublic at every stage. Lincoln, like Washington, 
illustrated in his life and administration his faith in God. It is seen 
in his first Inaugural Address, and in most of his public utterances 
which followed. On March 4, 1861, he said : 

If the Almighty Ruler, with His eternal truth and justice, be on your side 
of the North, or yours of the South, that ti-uth and justice will surely prevail by 
the justice of this great tribunal of the American people. Intelligence, patriot- 
ism, Christianity, and a firm reliance on Him who has never yet forsaken His 
favored land, are still competent to adjust in the best way all our present dif- 
ficulties. 

Marked and conspicuous is it shown in his inaugural on March 



586 SPEECHES AND ADDRESSES OF WILLIAM McKINLEY. 

4, 1865. He uses this language, which should rank with the highest 
of the inspirations of the great Liberator's writings : 

Neither party expected for the war the magnitude nor the duration which it 
has already attained. Neither anticipated that the cause of the conflict might 
cease with or even before the conflict itself should cease. Each looked for an 
easier triumph, and a result less fundamental and astounding. Both read the 
same Bible and pray to the same God ; and each invokes His aid against the other. 
It may seem strange that any men should dare to ask a just God's assistance in 
wringing their bread from the sweat of other men's faces ; but let us judge not, that 
we be not judged. The prayers of both could not be answered — that of neither 
has been answered fully. The Almighty has His own purposes. " Woe unto the 
world because of offenses ! for it must needs be that offenses come ; but woe to that 
man by whom the offense cometh ! " If we shall suppose that American slavery 
is one of those offenses which, in the providence of God, must needs come, but 
which, having continued through Ilis appointed time. He now wills to remove, and 
that He gives to both North and South this terrible war as the woe due to those by 
whom the offense came, shall we discern therein any departure from those Divine 
attributes which the believers in a living God always ascribe to Him ? Fondly 
do we hope — fervently do we pray — that this mighty scourge of war may speedily 
pass away. Yet if God wills that it continue until all the wealth piled by the 
bondsman's two hundred and fifty years of unrequited toil shall be sunk, and 
until every drop of blood drawn with the lash shall be paid with another by the 
sword, as was said three thousand years ago, so still it must be said, " The judg- 
ments of the Lord are true and righteous altogether." 

Mr. James Bryce, a member of the English Parliament, has writ- 
ten a most interesting work called The American Commonwealth, 
and has shown great intelligence and knowledge in the study of our 
laws, customs, and polity. He states the relation of religion to our 
Government as follows : 

The whole matter may, I think, be summed up by saying that Christianity is, 
in fact, understood to be, though not the legally established religion, yet the Na- 
tional religion. So far from thinking their Commonwealth godless, the Americans 
conceive that the religious character of a government consists in nothing biit the 
religious belief of the individual citizens and the conformity of their conduct to 
that belief. They deem the general acceptance of Christianity to be one of the 
main sources of their National prosperity and their Nation a special object of the 
Divine favor. They have an intelligent interest in that form of faith they pro- 
fess, are pious without superstition, and zealous without bigotry. It is an old 
saying that " monarchies live by honor, republics by virtue." The more demo- 
cratic republics become, the more the masses grow conscious of their own power, 
the more do they need to live not only by patriotism but by reverence and self- 
control, and the more essential to their well-being are those sources whence rever- 
ence and self-control flow. 

The past of our National life has been glorious in achievement — 
a veritable blessing and benediction to all mankind. What of the 



JULY FOURTH AT LAKESIDE. 587 

future? It must depend upon the intelligence and virtue of our 
people. That has been our rock of safety in the past ; it must be the 
cornerstone of our security in the future. I have an abiding faith 
in the integrity and wisdom of the American people. If that people 
observe the golden rule, and the plain American home, with its pure 
and wholesome influence, shall lead in the future as it has led in the 
past, there is, as Mr. Lincoln once said, " no equal hope in the world." 
Our public-school system and establishments of learning must be 
a mighty force in the continuance of our institutions. Upon educa- 
tion and morality rest the strength and destiny of the Eepublic. 
They are the firmament of its power. They constitute the force and 
majesty of free government. European nations look to their stand- 
ing armies to enforce obedience to law. We rely upon the public 
sentiment of our own people to secure obedience to the laws which 
they love because they make them. We are free and equal, and owe 
allegiance only to that written Constitution which Mr. Gladstone, 
the greatest statesman of the British Empire, has declared to be " the 
most wonderful work ever struck off at a given time by the brain and 
purpose of man." 

We have passed through many severe trials. Self-government 
has been subjected to tests the most searching. We have conquered 
all our foreign foes, and suppressed the most gigantic rebellion 
known to history. We had a severe test in 1876 in a close Presi- 
dential contest, but the conservative and patriotic judgment and sav- 
ing common sense of the people settled it, and Congress recorded its 
decree by submission to peaceful arbitration. It was a great strain 
upon popular government, and yet it was so happily settled that it 
serves as another tribute to the saving judgment of a free people. 
Our growth has been marvelous. A single State of the forty-four 
— more than one — exceeds in population that of the whole of the 
United States when it was organized under the present Constitution. 
Not only have we grown in population, but we have advanced in 
civilization, in art, in science, in literature, in invention, and have 
reached the first rank in manufacturing, mining, and agricultural 
development. We have but to keep pure the fountain of power, we 
have but to guard the foundation of public authority, and the future 
will be even more glorious than the past. We must never lose sight 
of the fact that citizen suffrage — constitutional suffrage — is the basis 
of all power and authority in a free government like ours. That 
suffrage must be free — free from corruption, free from bribery and 
venality, free from force and intimidation. It must express the un- 
38 



588 SPEECHES AND ADDRESSES OF WILLIAM McKINLEY. 

trammeled judgment of the citizen. It must register the will of him 
who exercises it, and not the will of somebody else. It must be 
cherished by him who holds this priceless privilege, and its exercise 
must not be denied nor prevented nor abridged under any pretext 
whatever. It is the most sacred privilege of the citizen, and its sanc- 
tity is the citadel of our security and power. Nothing but the pollu- 
tion of the ballot can withhold from this favored people the highest 
possibilities in civilization and destiny, i In 18T8 Gladstone, writing 
for the North American Review, and speaking of the American Re- 
public, said : 

She will probably become what we are now, the head servant in the great 
household of the world, the employer of all employed, because her service will be 
the most and the ablest. The England and the America of the present are prob- 
ably the two strongest nations in the world, but there can hardly be a doubt as 
between the America and the England of the future that the daughter, at some no 
very distant time, whether fairer or less fair, will be unquestionably yet stronger 
than the mother. 

This was written fourteen years ago. May not I confidently ven- 
ture the judgment that the " no very distant time " has been reached, 
and that America, " whether fairer or less fair "—certainly freer— is 
now " stronger than the mother " — stronger because her power lies in 
a free and intelligent and progressive people, whose only sovereign is 
the popular will constitutionally registered, and whose greatness and 
glory are linked with every heart and home of the Republic. 



THE TEIUMPH OF PROTECTION. 

Addeess befoee the Nebkaska Chautauqua Association, at 
Beatrice, Nebraska, August 2, 1893. 

My Fellow-Citizens : I am glad to meet the citizens of Ne- 
braska. I am glad to visit your progressive and prosperous city, and 
heartily congratulate you upon the advancement of your State in 
population, in wealth, and industrial activity. I am here upon the 
invitation of the Chautauqua Committee to discuss before this assem- 
blage the question of " Tariff and Taxation," which has given to it 
added importance this year because of the sharp divisions among the 
people as expressed in the latest platforms of the two leading parties 
of the country. I learn that on this platform you invite the freest 
discussions, and welcome men of every phase of party and political 
belief ; that all of the parties except the Eepublican party have been 
heard, and you have been kind enough to assign to me the presenta- 
tion of Eepublican belief and conviction upon the great issues which 
divide the parties this year. I will not discuss former issues, but the 
living one, the one which affects the revenues of the Government and 
the occupations and employments of the people. 

I suppose that no one will question that citizens of other countries 
desiring to bring their products into this country can do so only upon 
the conditions this Government may prescribe — the terms of their 
admission here to be fixed by us as it may seem best to us. This plain 
principle will be admitted by all. The question of difference will be 
the conditions to be prescribed, and this difference marks the divisions 
among our people and between the two great political parties of the 
country. The terms which both parties would prescribe recognize 
primarily the revenue needs of the Government, and both propose to 
provide for them. The one has that for its sole purpose ; the other 
has that for one of its purposes, coupled with another which takes 
into account home and country, and fixes the conditions so as to pro- 
mote our largest industrial prosperity and the highest development of 



590 SPEECHES AND ADDRESSES OF WILLIAM McKINLEY. 

our natural resources. The terms wliich our political adversaries 
would fix regard only revenue. The terms which we prescribe secure 
ample revenue for the Treasury and the highest rewards to the indus- 
try and activity of our own people. 

The latest National platform of the Democratic party is a bolder 
recognition of free trade than any of its predecessors. An analysis of 
it is necessary to its full understanding, and to that full understand- 
ing we must know what was reported, what was stricken out, and 
what was adopted as a substitute for all. The report, as it came from 
the Committee on Resolutions, declared that : 

When customs taxation is levied upon articles of any kind produced in this 
country, the difference between the cost of labor here and labor abroad fully 
measures any possible benefits to labor. 

That is stricken out, and this difference in favor of the American 
workingman is no longer to be recognized by the Democratic party in 
its arrangement of the tariff. Again : 

But in making reductions in taxes it is not proposed to injure any domestic 
industry. 

That is stricken out, and in their revised edition the Democracy 
take no thought of any domestic industry, and the reductions here- 
after to be made in the tariff will be heedless of the injury that may 
follow to our industrial interests. Again the report declares : 

From the foundation of this Government taxes collected at the customhouses 
have been the chief source of Federal revenue ; such they must continue to be. 

That is stricken out, which indicates most strongly that the new 
leaders of the Democratic party propose to abandon their old policy of 
raising revenue from customs and rely solely upon direct taxation for 
the revenue needs of the Government. They give up their old theo- 
ries of taxation, and are ready to accept the land-tax scheme of Henry 
George, or adopt the system of direct taxation which Thomas Jeffer- 
son declared was too odious and onerous to be thought of except in a 
great National emergency. Again, the Committee's report declares : 

So that every change of law must be at every step regardful of the labor and 
capital involved. 

That, too, is stricken out, and any change of law hereafter to be 
made is not to be regardful of the labor employed and capital invested 
in the great industries of the country. Again : 

The processes of reform must be subject to the execution of these plain dic- 
tates of justice. 



THE TRIUMPH OF PROTECTION. 591 

That is stricken out, and the new process of Democratic reform is 
not even to be framed on the plain principles of justice nor tempered 
with a single quality of mercy. No quarter is to be given, but all our 
vast enterprises must surrender without terms to the demands of tariff 
reform. And having stricken that all out, the Democratic leaders de- 
nounce " Republican protection as a fraud " : 

The robbery of the great majority of the American people for the benefit of 
the few. 

They declare that Congress has no constitutional power to enforce 
and collect tariff duties which are protective in their nature. The 
constitutionality of a protective tariff has not been seriously ques- 
tioned before for more than one hundred years. Never before, I be- 
lieve, was it questioned in the National platform of any party. The 
platform of to-day reads like the Ordinance of Nullification which 
passed a general convention in South Carolina sixty years ago. In- 
deed, after carefully reading the two documents, you may gravely 
suspect that the former was copied from the latter. If it is found 
that in any particular the platform differs from the Ordinance of 
Nullification, it is because the former has more closely adhered to the 
Confederate Constitution than to the Ordinance of Nullification. 
Protection unconstitutional ! — a policy which is as old as the Gov- 
ernment ; a policy which commenced with the Government ; a policy 
which was recognized in the second act ever passed by the Congress of 
the United States, by a Congress participated in by many of the 
framers of the Constitution, fresh from the preparation and promul- 
gation of that great instrument. That Congress passed a law in 1789, 
the preamble of which declared it to be : 

For the support of the Government, for the discharge of the debts of the 
United States, and for the encouragement and protection of manufactures. 

That law was passed by a unanimous vote in the Senate of the 
United States and by a majority of five to one in the House of Repre- 
sentatives, was reported by Mr. Madison, who was afterward Presi- 
dent of the United States, and was approved by George "Washington. 
If it is in violation of any Constitution, it is not that of the United 
States. It is a manifest violation of the Constitution of the Con- 
federate States. Possibly that is what our Democratic friends mean. 
Happily for us, however, we do not recognize that instrument, and 
never did, and we are not 0])orating under it. It went down before 
the resistless armies of the Union, commanded by Grant and Sher- 
man, and the Constitution of Washington and Lincoln was sustained, 



592 SPEECHES AND ADDRESSES OF WILLIAM McKINLEY. 

which from its birthtime until now has recognized and justified the 
principle of a protective tariff. Hamilton and Madison, Jefferson and 
Calhoun, Webster and Clay, Adams and Jackson, always asserted and 
maintained the constitutionality of protection. I wish the modern 
Democrat who is crying out against the constitutionality of the tariff 
would read the message of Andrew Jackson, dated December 7, 1830. 
He says : 

The object of the tariff is objected to by some as unconstitutional. 

Then follows : 

The power to impose duties on imports originally belonged to the several 
States. The right to adjust those duties with a view to the encouragement of do- 
mestic branches of industry is so completely identified with that power that it 
is difficult to suppose the existence of the one without the other. The States 
have delegated their authority over imports to the General Government with- 
out limitation or restriction, saving the very inconsiderable reservation relat- 
ing to their inspection laws. This authority having entirely passed from the 
States, the right to exercise it for the purpose of protection does not exist in 
them, and consequently if it be not possessed by the General Government it must 
be extinct. Our political system would thus present the anomaly of a people 
stripped of the right to foster their own industries and to counteract the most self- 
ish and destructive policy which might be adopted by foreign nations. This 
surely can not be the case ; this indispensable power, thus surrendered by the 
States, must be within the scope of the authority on the subject expressly dele- 
gated to Congress. In this conclusion I am confirmed by the opinions of Presi- 
dents Washington, Jefferson, Madison, and Monroe, who have each repeatedly 
recommended the exercise of this right under the Constitution, as by the uniform 
practice of Congress, the continued acquiescence of the States and general under- 
standing of the people. 

That is the old Democracy ! The free-trade platform of the 
Chicago Convention represents the new Democracy, but by no means 
a united Democracy, for there were 342 delegates to the last National 
Convention who voted against it, while 564 voted for it. The con- 
stitutional question has no life ; it is dead. It is scarcely worthy the 
passing comment I have given it. It is the threadbare objection of 
the Democratic party against every good measure, and it is the objec- 
tion they offer when every other fails. 

Now, upon what terms shall we admit foreign goods to the United 
States ? What is best for us ? What is best for the people at large ? 
What terms will secure the greatest good to the masses of our coun- 
trymen ? The terms proposed by those who differ from us on this 
question — the Democratic party — are, that everything shall come into 
this country free from abroad, except those products which we can 



THE TRIUMPH OF PROTECTION. 593 

not ourselves produce. Having in view revenue and only revenue, 
and being opposed to protection in any degree to domestic industries, 
they impose a tariff upon foreign products the like of which can not 
be grown upon our soil or made in our shops. Roger Q. Mills put 
this in a frank and forceful way on April 24, 1878, in the House of 
Representatives, in the discussion of the Wood Tariff Bill. He said : 

Our policy should be to take the smallest amount of taxes that we can by cus- 
toms, and we should gradually decrease the amount until our customs taxes come 
alone from no competing articles entering our customs. 

Mr. Samuel S. Cox, long a Representative from the States of Ohio 
and New York, and a very distinguished Democrat, said in 1888, in 
the discussion of the Mills bill : 

It would be a glorious consummation of this debate could we only have gen- 
tlemen on the other side join with us to clear the way for British Cobden free 
trade. 

" British Cobden free trade " imposes its tariffs upon noncompet- 
ing foreign products, upon those articles which their people must im- 
port ; and while England raises more than $100,000,000 from customs 
duties, it is principally upon the food and drink of its people, and upon 
such food and drink as can not be and are not produced at home. 
That is the Democratic way as well as the British way to have a tariff 
for revenue only. A tariff upon noncompeting foreign products 
does nothing but produce revenue. It encourages no domestic enter- 
prise, because there is none in this country making the product ujwn 
which they put the tariff. A low tariff upon a foreign product which 
competes with a home product would to a small degree favor the 
domestic industry ; but when it does that it ceases to be a tariff for 
revenue only, because it gives some slight protection to the domestic 
producer, and is at once condemned by the tariff reformer. It is 
proper, I should say in passing, that a tariff levied upon a non- 
competing foreign product is always paid by the importing country. 
And why? Because there is no production at home to compete 
with the foreign article imported which might influence its price to 
the consumer. The foreign producer controls the market, and the 
price to the consumer on such noncompeting article is the foreign 
price with the tariff added. But the other principle, and the one to 
which the Republican party adheres, is exactly the opposite of the 
one I have just described. It permits all foreign noncompeting prod- 
ucts, except luxuries, to come into our markets free, but imposes its 
tariffs upon those foreign products which we produce at home or pro- 



594 SPEECHES AND ADDRESSES OP WILLIAM McKINLEY. 

pose to produce at home, which tariff, while raising revenue, is a dis- 
crimination in favor of the domestic producer and against the foreign 
producer. That is, we say : " Bring what you have to us that we can 
not grow or make, without burden or restriction, without tariff or 
condition ; but if you want to bring here what we do produce and can 
produce, to compete with our producers and share this market with 
them, then such product must bear the burden of a tariff." Is not that 
right ? If we were just beginning anew as a Government and never 
had a tariff law, would not that be the correct principle ? The things 
we can not make for ourselves or produce for ourselves we must buy 
elsewhere, and therefore we want no tax upon them ; but it is economy 
for our people to buy from each other the things we can produce 
among ourselves and for ourselves ; and if the foreign producer wants 
to enjoy any part of this market, he must be subject to the terms we 
shall fix in the interest of our own countrymen. That is the principle 
of protection. That is the doctrine of patriotism. That is the prin- 
ciple of our country first and our countrymen first. That is the prin- 
ciple of home and family. That is the doctrine of true Americanism. 
The Republican party has never hesitated to impose duties upon 
noncompeting foreign products whenever the revenue necessities of 
the Government required it, but believe in it only as a public neces- 
sity. 

We have free trade among ourselves throughout our forty-four 
States and the several Territories. That is because we are one family, 
one country. We have one standard of citizenship, one flag, one 
Constitution, one Nation, one destiny. That is why we have free 
trade among ourselves. Our relations with the nations outside are 
necessarily different from our relations among ourselves. They are a 
separate organism — a distinct and independent political society organ- 
ized to work out their own destiny. They are our commercial rivals. 
We deny to those foreign nations trade with us upon the same terms 
we enjoy among ourselves. The foreign producer is not entitled to 
equality with us in this market. He pays no taxes ; he is not amen- 
able to our laws; he performs no civil or military duties; he is ex- 
empt from State, county, and municipal taxes ; he contributes noth- 
ing primarily to the support of the Government or its progress and 
prosperity. Upon what principle, I pray you, should he enjoy equal 
privileges and profits in our markets with our producers, our laborers, 
our taxpayers ? We have no way of reaching him except through the 
customhouse. He is unknown to our tax collector, who visits us an- 
nually ; but this official can not visit him. The arm of the State is 



THE TRIUMPH OF PROTECTION. 595 

too short and the power of the Federal Govf •nment too limited to 
touch anything he has or possesses. And so we say to him, " When 
you want to bring your products here to compete with ours, this being 
our home, our natural market, those products must have attached 
to them a condition ; and that condition shall be the payment of 
duties, which shall go into the Federal Treasury, to relieve in part 
the taxpayers of the United States from the burdens which rest upon 
them." 

Free trade gives to the foreign producer equal privileges with us.. 
Upon what principle of fair play should he have them ? It invites 
the product of his cheaper labor to this market to destroy the do- 
mestic product representing our higher and better-paid labor. It 
destroys our factories or reduces our labor to the level of his. It in- 
creases foreign production but diminishes home joroduction. It will 
kindle fires in the furnaces of England, and extinguish the fires in 
our own. It will close the iron mines of the great Northwest, and 
leave untenanted the coal and coke regions of the East. It will do all 
this with unerring certainty, unless the standard of American labor 
shall be pulled down to the plane and condition of foreign labor : one 
or the other is inevitable. In any event it destroys the dignity and 
independence of American labor, diminishes its pay and employment, 
decreases its capacity to buy the products of the farm and the com- 
modities of the merchant. We can not have free trade in this coun- 
try without having free-trade conditions. The Democratic platform 
demands it upon these conditions, and is bound to have it at any cost. 
The world knows what these conditions are. The farmers of Eng- 
land know what they are. The workingmen of England understand 
them. Thousands of men who have worked on both sides of the 
ocean and under both systems know them well. To introduce them 
here will be a costly experiment. It will bring widespread discontent. 
It Avill revolutionize values. It will take away more than one half of 
the earning capacity of brain and brawn. Worse than all that, it will 
take away from the people of this country who work for a living — 
and the majority of them live by the sweat of their faces — it will take 
from them heart and home and hope. It will be self-destruction. 
Free trade results in giving our money, our manufactures, and our 
markets to other nations. Protection keeps money, markets, and 
manufactures at home. But they say, Protection is a burden upon 
the people. Mr. Cleveland joins the choir of calamity. He said in 
his speech the other day at Madison Square Garden, in accepting the 
nomination for the Presidency : 



596 SPEECHES AND ADDRESSES OF WILLIAM McKINLEY. 

Turning our eyes to the plain people of the land, we see them burdened as 
consumers with a tariff system that unjustly and relentlessly demands from them, 
in the purchase of the comforts and necessaries of life, an amount scarcely met by 
the wages of hard and steady toil. We see the farmer listening to a delusive 
story that fills his mind with visions of advantage while his pocket is robbed by 
the stealthy hand of high protection. 

Mr. Cleveland, I fear, has not consulted the markets since 1890. 
He had in mind the campaign prices then prevailing, and seems to 
have been unadvised of what has occurred since. Mr. Cleveland had 
not then read the report of the Senate Committee appointed by Joint 
resolution of that body to investigate the effects of the new tariff law 
upon the consumer and producer and upon the wages of labor. I 
commend the careful reading of that document to the distinguished 
gentleman, with the hope that he may correct the error into which he 
has fallen, and, with that rugged honesty which his friends ascribe to 
him, publicly proclaim the wrong he has done to truth and the false 
impression he has made of the legislation of his own country. The 
value of the report, the reading of which I commend to the gentle- 
man, will be seen when I state that it was made by the following Sen- 
ators : Aldrich, Allison, Hiscock, Jones, Harris, and Carlisle, and 
that the report is a unanimous one. 

This report has ascertained and stated the cost of food, clothes 
and clothing, fuel and lighting, house furnishing, foods, drugs and 
chemicals, metals and implements, lumber and building material, for 
each month, commencing June 1, 1889, and ending September 1, 
1891. The result of the investigation, which has been most careful 
and scrutinizing, and absolutely nonpartisan, shows the decline in 
the retail prices of 214 selected articles — articles of comfort and ne- 
cessity — to be .64 of 1 per cent less, by one method of computation, 
and 1.8 per cent less by another, in September, 1891, than during 
any of the months preceding and covered by the investigation. The 
Committee, in addition to the investigation for the twenty-eight 
months noted, asked the Commissioner of Labor of the United 
States to ascertain the retail prices in three cities — namely, Fall 
Kiver, Mass., Chicago, III, and Dubuque, Iowa — of the 214 articles 
referred to. The result of his investigation shows a further decline 
in the cost of living in May, 1892, as compared with September, 1891, 
of 2.1 per cent, and as compared with June, July, and August, 1889, 
of 3.4 per cent. This report also shows in every part of it a constant 
tendency to lower prices of the necessaries and comforts of life. This 
would seem to dispose of Mr. Cleveland's assertion that the tariff has 



THE TRIUMPH OF PROTECTION. 597 

increased prices to the consumer, and leaves his statement devoid of 
that essential element of strength — truth. The report also shows 
that, while the cost of living has decreased here, it has during the 
same period in England increased 1.9 jjer cent. 

Now, turning to wages : It appears from the report of the Statis- 
tician that, in the fifteen general occupations selected by the Commit- 
tee, wages were three fourths of 1 per cent higher in September, 1891, 
than during the three months selected as a basis in 1889 ; and that 
the wages in special industries selected was .31 of 1 per cent higher 
than at the beginning of the period in June, 1889 ; and that the wages 
in the same occupations in the United States averaged 77 per cent 
greater than in Great Britain, which is under a Democratic free-trade 
revenue tariff. Then, as to the farmers, to whom Mr. Cleveland so 
plaintively refers, this report says that the average price of all the 
agricultural products, except flaxseed, when put at their proper rela- 
tive importance, were 18.67 per cent higher in September, 1891, 
than in June, 1889. May I not, in the light of this report and the 
facts everywhere observable, remind Mr. Cleveland that in the year 
1892 we are confronted by a condition and not a theory? The 
truth is that manufactured goods are cheaper to-day than they were 
under the revenue-tariff policy inaugurated forty-six years ago, and 
which continued down to 1861. They are for the most part cheaper 
than before the passage of the tariff law of 1890. A day's labor will 
buy more to-day than it ever bought before. The products of the 
farm will buy more of the every-day necessities of life, more cloth 
and cotton, more iron and steel, more glass and pottery, more sugar 
and salt than the same quantity would ever buy before. Substan- 
tially, every manufactured article which protection directly affects 
has been reduced in price. Labor alone has been able, amid the most 
general reductions of prices, to maintain its own. 

Mr. Edward Atkinson, a free trader and a Cleveland Democrat, 
said in the May Forum : 

There has never been a period in the history of this or any other country 
when the general rate of wages was as high as it is now, or the prices of goods 
relatively to the wages as low as they are to-day, nor a period when the working- 
man, in the strictest sense of the word, has so fully secured to his own use and 
enjoyment such a steadily and progressively increasing proportion of a constantly 
increasing product. 

The same gentleman recently said in the Boston Herald : 

Since 1880 there has been a marked increase in the rate of wages or earnings 
of all occupations of every kind above the grade of common laborers. So far as 



598 SPEECHES AND ADDRESSES OF WILLIAM McKINLEY. 

the writer has been able to obtain the data, this advance in rates of wages may be 
estimated at from 10 to 30 per cent as compared with the rates of 1880, the pro- 
portionate advance in each case being in ratio to the relative skill required in the 
work. The wages of the common laborer have not advanced very much, but he 
has been rendered able to buy more for his wages on account of the reduction in 
prices. The skilled laborer has secured the highest rate of wages ever known in 
this or any other country, and can also buy more for each dollar. The advocate 
of free trade who denies this advance makes a mistake. 

It is said that the tariff law of 1890 is a grievous wrong upon the 
consumer. I have before me the Bermuda Colonist, a paper pub- 
lished in Hamilton, Bermuda, dated April 23, 1892, containing the 
proceedings of the Colonial Parliament, which had under considera- 
tion at that date the American tariff and how its burdens were to be 
removed from the inhabitants of that island. You will observe that 
the producers of Bermuda believe they pay the increased tariff under 
the new law, notwithstanding the tariff reformer's claim is otherwise. 
And they have appointed a Commission to come to the United States 
to secure a reduction of the tariff upon their products. This is the 
language of the message to the Governor : 

We are directed by the House of Assembly to bring to the notice of your Ex- 
cellency the serious loss that the people of Bermuda have suffered, and which 
they are likely in the future to sustain, by the high i-ate of tariff that by the pres- 
ent laws of the United States is charged on Bermuda products shipped to that 
country, and to especially request tliat your Excellency will be pleased to take 
into consideration the following statement, which is submitted with a view of en- 
deavoring to obtain — with the sanction of the Imperial Government and the Gov- 
ernment at Washington — a reduction in the tariff above referred to. The amount 
of Bermuda products shipped to the United States from January to Jane inclu- 
sive, in 1890, amounted in value to $560,755.12. On this amount, under the old 
tariff rates, the duties amounted to not less than $55,234.08. In 1891 the quantity 
of produce shipped to the United States from January to June amounted to $531.- 
113.12. On this amount, under the new or McKinley tariff, duties were paid 
amounting to not less than $134,876.28. Thus, while the value of products 
shipped to the United States in the year 1891 was $18,400 less in value than in 
1890, the amount paid as duties was $79,642.20 in excess of the duties paid in the 
former year, making a direct loss to the growers in each case of a large percent- 
age of the amount, as the market value of our products in the United States will 
not allow of any advance in price commensurate with so heavy a tariff. 

That being so, who pays the tax ? They assert they can not add 
the tariff to the price to the American consumer, so he gets it at the 
old price, notwithstanding the increased tariff ; that is, the consumer 
pays no more for Bermuda products than he did previous to the new 
law, the Bermuda producer gets less, and the American Treasury more 
money. Who contributes that money to the Treasury — the foreign 



THE TRIUMPH OP PROTECTION. 599 

producer or the American consumer ? This will indicate to you how- 
foreign countries regard this tariff. They hold it to be burdensome 
upon them — a tax upon them which they must yield up to our 
Treasury if they want to enter this market. Similar discussions are 
going on in Canada, in France, in England, and in other countries. 
We increased the tariff in the new law upon a number of foreign 
products which compete with home products, but in no single in- 
stance, except possibly in the case of pearl buttons, has there been 
any advance in prices to the actual consumer. Yet Mr. Cleveland, in 
his recent speech in Rhode Island, said : " The consumer has found 
life harder since the passage of the new tariff law than before." 

That is not true. The consumer has not found life harder, for the 
commodities which enter into his daily life are, in a great majority of 
cases, lower than they were before the new tariff law went into effect. 
He has had cheaper sugar, cheaper clothing, cheaper boots and shoes, 
and cheaper nails than before. A careful investigation of prices of 
woolen and cotton goods made in the city of New York, and em- 
bracing over 2,000 quotations of articles for a comparative period 
under the new and old tariffs (and this was made by an expert who 
has reported prices for forty years), shows that in about 98 per cent of 
all these quotations and articles there has been an actual decrease in 
price since the new tariff went into effect, as compared with the same 
prices of goods under the old tariff. Furthermore, the old industries 
have been stimulated and very many new industries started, Avhich 
are now estimated to have given employment to from 200,000 to 
250,000 employes ; and it is a fact well established by reports from 
all other countries that at this time, while depression and anxiety 
exist in their industries, there is prosperity in the United States 
alone. When the tariff has been increased upon a foreign article, and 
it does not increase the price to the American consumer, how does the 
American consumer suffer? He gets the commodity at as low a 
price as he got it under the old tariff, notwithstanding the increase 
of the tariff ; so he loses nothing ; but labor in America gains every- 
thing. Take the case of carpets, one of the most marked increases 
under the new law. We advanced the tariff on wool, which lies at 
the foundation of the carpet industry, to protect the wool growers of 
the country. We advanced the tariff on carpets, the finished product, 
to compensate the manufacturer for the increased duty on wool, and 
yet to-day the prices are no higher than they were before the enact- 
ment of the new law. It is true, prices went up on carpets immedi- 
ately after the passage of the law, but these prices were speculative 



600 SPEECHES AND ADDRESSES OF WILLIAM McKINLEY. 

rather than real. But to-day there is no line of carpets that you can 
not buy as cheaply as you could prior to October 6, 1890 ; and as to 
ingrain and other lower grades of carpets, they are even cheaper now 
than then ; so that the increased protection that we give to the wool 
grower, and which he required as a defense against ruinous competi- 
tion from abroad, has cost the American consumer nothing, and to 
the wool grower and farmer has been a positive benefit. 

They say that a protective tariff shuts us out of a foreign market. 
I have before me a statement from the Treasury Department, cor- 
rected to July 14, 1892, showing our foreign commerce. The total 
value of imports and exports of merchandise attained its highest 
point, amounting to $1,857,726,910, in the last fiscal year, as against 
$1,729,307,006 during the fiscal year of 1891, an increase of $128,- 
329,904, and an increase of $370,198,883 over 1889. The excess in 
value of exports over imports during the last fiscal year was $202,- 
944,342. The value of our imports of merchandise during the last 
fiscal year amounted to $824,301,284, as against $844,916,193 in 1891, 
a decrease of $20,614,909. There was an increase in our imports of 
coffee, unmanufactured silk, sugar, and molasses, and the decrease 
was in tin plate, manufactured silk, manufactures of tobaccos, manu- 
factures of wool, vegetables, fruits, and textile grasses. Notwith- 
standing the cry that under a protective tariff we can not sell abroad 
if we do not buy abroad, yet during the last fiscal year we sold abroad 
nearly $203,000,000 more than we bought abroad ; $203,000,000 was 
the excess in our favor which tlie foreigners paid to us, and which 
we have at home circulating among our own people. Dutiable mer- 
chandise has decreased under the operation of the new law, as shown 
by the report of the Secretary of the Treasury. The value of mer- 
chandise imported upon which duty was paid for the year ending 
June 30, 1892, was $369,300,139, while for the preceding year it was 
$478,674,844, showing a decrease in the value of merchandise paying 
duty of $109,374,705. 

It will also be observed that, under the operation of the new law, 
the free list has been increased, while the dutiable list is decreased. 
The value of free imports for the last year exceeded the value of duti- 
able imports by $88,000,000. During the last fiscal year the value of 
imported merchandise free of duty was over $458,000,000, an increase 
over the preceding year of $91,759,793. The average ad valorem rate 
per cent of duty on the aggregate of imports has gradually decreased 
since the passage of the new tariff law. The average rate per cent 
for the year ending March 31, 1892, of free and dutiable goods, was 



THE TRIUMPH OF PROTECTION. 601 

20.65 per cent ; in 1891, 28 per cent ; 1890, 28.92 per cent ; and in 
1889, 30.69 per cent. The average rate to-day is less than it has been 
at any time before for thirty years. More than one half of the value 
of all our imports is absolutely free. In 1889 the percentage of free 
goods was 34.42 per cent, and in 1892, 55.36 per cent. We collected 
during the last fiscal year ^65,810,670 in duties less than the duties 
collected during the preceding year. So, if " the tariff is a tax," as 
our adversaries assert, we should at least be credited with having 
wiped out $65,810,670 of " burdensome taxes " from the people. The 
value of our exports of merchandise during the fiscal year 1892 was 
$1,030,335,626. The value of our exports in 1891 was $884,480,810, 
an increase of $145,854,816 — a wonderful and marvelous increase of 
our foreign trade under a tariff law which was to close the foreign 
market to our products ! Our exports never before reached that 
point in any given year in all our history. 

The story is told so often that many good people have come to 
believe it that protection has destroyed our foreign trade. The cus- 
tomhouse figures conclusively refute this, and I wish they might be 
studied by every voter. In 1870 we were under protection. We ex- 
ported that year products of the value of $376,616,473. This year 
we exported more than a billion dollars' worth of American products. 
In 1870 we imported products to the value of $435,958,408, and this 
year $827,381,284. Our exports have trebled in twenty-two years and 
our imports doubled, and all the while under protection. Our export 
trade under the tariff law of 1890 increased 15^- per cent, and the ex- 
ports of Great Britain in the same period under a Democratic free- 
trade tariff decreased 5^ per cent. What protection will do and has 
done, what a Democratic revenue tariff will do and has done, is not 
left to speculation. Our own history records the story of both. 
From 1847 to 1861 under a free-trade revenue tariff the balance of 
trade against us was more than $431,000,000 ; and there were but 
two years of the fifteen when the balance of trade was in our favor ; 
while from 1876 to 1891, a period of fifteen years, there were just 
two years when the balance of trade was against us. We were then 
under protection, thirteen years when the balance of trade was in our 
favor, and the balance aggregated $1,649,445,246. Which period was 
the most profitable to the American people ? 

It is maintained by the Democratic leaders, but rests wholly in 
assumption, that the farmer would be benefited by a revenue tariff — 
that his export trade in agricultural products would be increased. 
Let us refer again to our own history : From 1846 to 1861, during 



602 SPEECHES AND ADDRESSES OP WILLIAM McKINLEY. 

the entire revenue-tariff period, we exported 65,440,173 bushels of 
wheat. We exported in a single year under protection, that of 1878, 
72,000,000 bushels of wheat, or 0,000,000 more than the aggregate of 
the entire fifteen years under a revenue tariff ; and in 1880, 1881, 
1882, 1885, 1887, 1891, we imported more wheat in each year than we 
sold abroad in all the years from 1846 to 1861 under the Walker free- 
trade tariff of 1846. We export now in a single year more wheat 
than was exported from 1790 to 1861, a period of seventy-two years — 
more wheat in a single year than in all the years from Washington to 
Lincoln. Can the farmer justly complain of this showing, and does 
the tariff reformer extract any comfort from it ? 

Whether you consult the question of domestic trade or foreign 
trade, protection in our own country has given us the best results. It 
has given us the largest activity at home and the largest sale of our 
products abroad. Protection not only directly benefits the great indus- 
tries of the country by making it possible to establish them — and thus 
furnishing employment to labor — but it makes a demand for raw 
materials of every kind and character, which but for our manufactur- 
ing enterprises at home would be practically useless and without 
value. Protection is a positive benefit to the farmers of this country. 
There is no class of our fellow-citizens more clearly benefited by 
the protective tariff than the farmers of the United States. It makes 
a home demand for their products, and home consumers are always 
better than foreign consumers, because they are nearer the field of pro- 
duction. They enable the farmer to dispose of perishable products at 
a profit, which it would be impracticable to ship abroad. It therefore 
increases to that extent the demand for the products of agriculture 
and widens the use of the farm. Millions of dollars annually of the 
products of the farm are sold in our industrial towns which would 
not be raised at all but for the demand which they make. What the 
farmer wants are consumers, and the more consumers and fewer com- 
petitors he has the better will be his profits ; and he wants these con- 
sumers steady and regular and at all times reliable. He has such in 
the 65,000,000 consumers in this country, who are the best and most 
profitable consumers to be found anywhere on the globe. He is sure 
of them, while his foreign market is fitful, far removed, less certain, 
and dependent upon agricultural conditions in the foreign countries 
whether there is a short crop or a long crop. There he has competi- 
tion ; here he has practically the field, with little or no competition 
except with his own fellow-citizens. 

As illustrating the difference in value between the domestic con- 



THE TRIUMPH OP PROTECTION. (503 

sumer and the foreign consumer, I have but to state that the work- 
ingman in the American shop consumes more than $90 worth of agri- 
cultural products annually of the American farmer, while the foreign 
workingman consumes less than 85 worth of American agricultural 
products annually. The American consumer is, therefore, worth 
eighteen times more, and is eighteen times a better customer of the 
farmer here than is the foreign workingman. The Democratic leader 
of to-day seems to think there is some peculiar sanctity about the for- 
eign consumer that does not attach to the domestic. I do not. I pre- 
fer the domestic consumer because he is the best ; he consumes more, 
and has more money to pay for his living, than any other consumer in 
the wide, wide world. The agriculturists of this country do not want 
more farmers. They want more people who do not raise their own 
food and whom they can supply. Every farmer would rather have 
a factory for his neighbor than another farmer. Every factory that 
is built up increases the farmer's customers, the value of his product, 
and the value of his land. Every factory that is broken down dimin- 
ishes the farmer's customers, the value of his product, and the value 
of his land, and increases his competitors. If the workingmen of 
this country can not get employment in the factories they must seek 
it elsewhere. They can not find it in any other mechanical pursuits, 
so they must go to the land. There every man can go when he can 
not find work at his accustomed occupation ; and when he goes there 
he takes out of the ground a living, and he is no longer the con- 
sumer of your products, but produces for himself and becomes a 
competitor of yours instead of a customer of yours, as he is to- 
day. Every new industry increases the farmer's home market and 
furnishes him what he most wants— profitable customers. It is 
no fault of the new tariff law if the farmers of the United States 
do not supply every agricultural want of our entire population. 
We framed that law to give them this market ; and we framed that! 
law not only to give them exclusive control of this market, but toj 
encourage industries which would increase the consumers by increas- 
ing the factories and the demand for labor therein. Every product 
of the farm is protected by the new law directly, and, by the main- 
tenance of our thousands of great enterprises, it indirectly secures for 
the farmer the best market in the world for his products. 

How do agriculturists fare in free-trade England ? Let Mr. Glad- 
stone answer : 

We have in many parts of the country not only a stationary but a decreasing 
rural population. There are no just sacrifices that ought not to be encountered 
39 



604 SPEECHES AND ADDRESSES OF WILLIAM McKINLEY. 

in order to stop the process which leaves the rural laborer in a condition where 
he can hardly hope to keep his wife and children even with an insufficient supply 
of the necessaries of life. 

Cardinal Manning wrote, a year and a half ago, that land was go- 
ing out of cultivation in parts of England. Fair Play, an English 
publication, gives the rate of wages paid to agricultural laborers at 
Berwick, Carlisle, Whitby, and Thirsh, the four principal agricul- 
tural centers of England. The wages paid to young men run from 
115 to $37.50 a year ; to men, ordinary laborers, from $40 to $55 a 
year ; for managers of farms, from $80 to $150 a year ; plowmen, 
$60 to $90 a year ; for girls, $25 to $50 a year ; female managers of 
farmhouses and dairies, $80 to $100 a year. There is nothing in the 
condition of agriculture in England under free trade to induce our 
farmers to exchange what they have for what it offers, and there is no 
market abroad so valuable to them as the one they have at home. It 
should be the aim and purpose of every farmer to retain it. 

The enemies of protection talk unceasingly about its burdens, but 
do not particularize. If there is anything that the free trader shrinks 
from it is facts and conditions. They can not designate the charac- 
ter of the injury which they so persistently allege follows the pro- 
tective tariff. Everything around them contradicts their theories. 
Trade and business, wages and prices, all unite in destroying their 
argument. Nor do they propose any remedy or present any relief. 
If protection is a real injury to the American people some evi- 
dence of it should be at hand — something which we might see and 
feel and know. The individual citizen should know it from personal 
realization ; he should know it from increased prices of the neces- 
saries of life, from scanty employment and still scantier wages. But 
whatever knowledge comes to him from his own actual experiences 
gives him no realizing sense that protection is a burden, but, on the 
contrary, that it is a blessing and a benefit. If it is not a burden 
upon the citizen, is it a burden upon the Government itself, or the 
States, or any of our municipal organizations? Under it the Nation 
has marched to a prosperity unrivaled in the world's history. Under 
it, in part, the United States was enabled to furnish the money with 
which to prosecute a mighty war, and has been able in the last twenty 
years to reduce the National debt so that to-day it is less by two 
thirds than it was at the close of the war. Its credit has steadily im- 
proved since protection was made the National policy in 1861, and at 
this hour it has a credit unequaled by any other commercial nation, 
and unequaled ever before in its own history. The States and the 



THE TRIUMPH OF PROTECTION. 605 

municipalities have in ten years made a substantial reduction of their 
public indebtedness. While all this has been going on the great 
masses of the people have prospered, and their earnings, as represented 
in the savings banks of the country, are greater by far than the earn- 
ings of any other people on the face of the earth. 

Thirty years of protection has brought us to the first rank in agri- 
culture, in mining, and in manufacturing development. We lead all 
nations in these three great departments of industry. We have out- 
stripped even the United Kingdom, which had centuries the start of 
us. Her fiscal policy for fifty years past has been the free-trade rev- 
enue tariff policy of the Democrats, ours for thirty-one years the pro- 
tective tariff policy of the Republicans. Tried by any test, measured 
by any standard, we lead all the rest of the world. Protection has 
vindicated itself. It can not be helped by eulogy nor hurt by defama- 
tion. It has worked out its own demonstration, and presents in the 
sight of the whole world its matchless trophies. It can not be cried 
down by false names nor injured by offensive epithets, nor can it any 
longer suffer from falsehood, nor the forebodings of the false prophet. 
It has triumphed over all its traducers at home and abroad. It has 
made the lives of the masses of our countrymen sweeter and brighter, 
and has entered the homes of America carrying comfort and cheer 
and courage. It gives a premium to human energy, and awakens 
the noblest aspirations in the breasts of men. Our own experience 
shows that it is best for our citizenship and our civilization, and that 
it opens up a higher and better destiny for our people. 



AN AUXILIAKY TO KELIGION. 

Address at the Dedication of the Y. M. C. A. Building in 
YouNGSTOWN, Ohio, September 6, 1892. 

Mr. President, Ladies and Gentlemen : I am very glad to 
join with the citizens of Youngstown in celebrating the completion 
of this beautiful building, dedicated to the young men for physical, 
moral, and religious training. I congratulate the young men upon 
their good fortune, and unite with them in gratitude to the generous, 
public-spirited people through whose efforts this Christian home has 
been established. It will stand a monument to your city, and an 
honor to those who have shared in its erection. It will be an auxil- 
iary to all moral and religious effort. It will be the vestibule to the 
Church, and the gateway to a higher and better Christian life. It 
will not take the place of the Church, and other agencies for good, 
but it will supplement and strengthen them all. 

It is a good omen for our civilization and country when these As- 
sociations can be successfully planted as a part of the system of per- 
manent education for the improvement and elevation of the masses ; 
it is another step upward and onward to a higher and grander Chris- 
tian civilization. It is another recognition of the Master who rules 
over all, a worthy tribute to Him who came on earth to save fallen 
man and lead him to a higher plain. It is an expression of your 
faith in an overruling Providence, and strengthens the faith of every 
believer. You have been made better by the gifts you have bestowed 
upon this now completed undertaking ; you have the approval of not 
only your own consciences, but you have the gratitude of the present 
generation, and you will have, in all time to come, the blessings of 
those who are to be the future beneficiaries of this institution. Ee- 
spect for true religion and righteous living is on the increase. Men 
no longer feel constrained to conceal their faith to avoid derision. 
The religious believer commands and receives the highest consider- 
ation at the hands of his neighbors and countrymen, however much 



AN AUXILIARY TO RELIGION. 607 

they may disagree with him ; and when his life is made to conform 
to his religious professions, his influence is almost without limitation, 
widespread and far-reaching. 

No man gets on so well in this world as he whose daily walk and 
conversation are clean and consistent, whose heart is pure, and whose 
life is honorable. A religious spirit helps every man. It is at once 
a comfort and an inspiration, and makes him stronger, wiser, and 
better in every relation of life. There is no substitute for it. It may 
be assailed by its enemies, as it has been, but they offer nothing in 
its place. It has stood the test of centuries and has never failed to 
help and bless mankind. It is stronger to-day than at any previous 
period of its history, and every event like this you celebrate increases 
its permanency and power. The world has use for the young man 
who is well grounded in principle, who has reverence for truth and 
religion, and courageously follows their teachings. Employment 
awaits his coming and honor crowns his path. More than all this, 
conscious of rectitude, he meets the cares of life with courage ; the 
duties which confront him he discharges with manly honesty. These 
Associations elevate and purify our citizenship, and establish more 
firmly the foundations of our free institutions. The men who estab- 
lished this Government had faith in God and sublimely trusted in 
Him. They besought his counsel and advice in every step of their 
progress. And so it has been ever since ; American history abounds 
in instances of this trait of piety, this sincere reliance on a Higher 
Power in all great trials in our National affairs. Our rulers may not 
always be observers of the outward forms of religion, but we have 
never had a President, from Washington to Harrison, who publicly 
avowed infidelity, or scoffed at the faith of the masses of our people. 

It is told of Lincoln that he once called upon General Sickles, 
who had just been brought from the field to Washington City, having 
lost a leg in one of the charges at Gettysburg. His call was one of 
sympathy, and after he had inquired into every detail of that great 
and crucial battle. General Sickles said to him : 

"Mr. Lincoln, what did you think of Gettysburg? Were you 
much concerned about it ? " 

Lincoln replied, " I thought very little about Gettysburg, and I 
had no concern about it." 

The General expressed great surprise, and said that he had un- 
derstood that the capital was in a great panic as to the outcome, and 
asked : 

" Why were you not concerned about the battle of Gettysburg ? " 



608 SPEECHES AND ADDRESSES OP WILLIAM McKINLEY. 

" Well," replied the simple-minded Lincoln, *' I will tell you, if 
you will not tell anybody about it. Before that battle I went into my 
room at the White House, I knelt on my knees, and I prayed to God 
as I had never prayed to Him before, and I told Him if He would 
stand by us at Gettysburg I would stand by Him ; and He did, and I 
shall. And when I arose from my knees I imagined I saw a spirit 
that told me I need not trouble about Gettysburg." 

May this institution meet the fullest expectations of its founders 
and projectors, and prove a mighty force in the well-being of the 
community ! Interested as I am in every department of work in our 
State, I can not avoid especial and peculiar interest in anything which 
benefits the Mahoning Valley, the place where I was born, and where 
I spent my younger manhood, and around which cling tender and af- 
fectionate memories that can never be effaced. I am glad to share 
this day with you, to participate in these exercises which open the 
doors of this building to the young men of this valley, consecrated to 
honorable uses, and for their lasting good. I wish you prosperity in 
your workshops, love in your homes, and bid you God-speed in this 
laudable work. 



THE ISSUES OF 1892. 

Speech at the Academy of Music, Philadelphia, Pa., 

September 23, 1892. 

Mr. President and my Fellow-Citizens : I am glad to meet 
the citizens of Philadelphia in public assemblage to-night, for public 
discussion. I am glad to look into the faces of the business men, 
manufacturers, meclianics, and trades people, who have not alone con- 
tributed to the building of this great city, but from whose ranks have 
gone forth thousands who have shared in the building of the cities of 
the Middle and Western States. The energy and spirit of the Quaker 
City are shown in every section of the Eepublic. Your history is a 
part, and a most interesting part, of the history of our country. Here 
the political independence of the United States was declared. Here 
the great framework of the Government, the Constitution itself, was 
constructed. Here, from that time until this, every thought and 
asj)iration of the people of this city have always been for the well 
being and prosperity of the country ; every sentiment of your com- 
munity has been for the safety, the perpetuity, and the glory of the 
Union. Here you have demonstrated, as probably no other city in 
the Union has demonstrated, the ability to secure industrial independ- 
ence, and have illustrated by your skill, industry, and capital that we 
need be dependent upon no foreign nation for the comforts, the ne- 
cessities, the luxuries and refinements of civilized life. You have 
shown in the most impressive way how handicraft and manufactures, 
fostered by just laws, enrich a community, giving to capital fair re- 
ward and to skill and labor happy and contented homes ; for I believe 
there is no city in the Union where so many men own their own 
homes as here in your own good city. And, after all, it is the home 
that lies at the foundation of good government. Through the home 
comes the best citizenship, and through the best citizenship comes 
the freest, purest, and best government among men. 

But, Mr. President, I have come here at the request of the Manu- 



610 SPEECHES AND ADDRESSES OP WILLIAM McKINLEY. 

facturers' Club of your city, not to indulge in felicitation, but to ad- 
dress you upon the condition of the country, and the effect upon such 
condition of the public policies which are advocated by the two great 
political parties of the United States, and upon which the people 
must give their verdict in November next. These policies are before 
you. What the one or the other of the two great political parties 
will do, if clothed with power by the suffrages of the people this year, 
is not in doubt. Fortunately (and it has not always been so) every 
voter can know the design and purpose of the Eepublican and Demo- 
cratic parties by their National platforms. 

Before passing to the discussion of the tariff I desire to call your 
attention to a most remarkable declaration of purpose upon the part 
of the Democratic leaders, as expressed in the Chicago platform. It 
is a demand for the abolition of the 10-per-cent tax upon State banks 
of issue. This tax was laid during the war, for the purpose of dis- 
placing State bank circulation with National money. It had the 
effect intended. It was necessary to the conduct of the war and the 
preservation of the Government. We had a Nation to save, and Na- 
tional agencies were required. The State bank notes went out of 
circulation, and the National greenbacks and the National bank notes 
came into circulation. There can be but one purpose in the abolition 
of the tax upon State banks, and that purpose must be to restore 
them. The result of such action on the part of the Democratic party 
would give us a circulating medium in the forty-four States and the 
several Territories under different rules and regulations and with dif- 
ferent securities for the notes to be issued — forty-four different kinds 
of money, under such regulations as the several States, through their 
Legislatures, might prescribe — all subject to local influences and to 
the greed of the speculator and the usurer. I can imagine nothing so 
disastrous to the business of the country as the restoration of that kind 
of money with which to measure the exchanges of the people. It means 
that our currency is to be denationalized ; that it is to be local in its 
character, unstable and varied in its value ; good possibly within the 
State where issued, but at a discount whenever the State line is crossed. 
I can not believe that, with the experience this country had under 
that system which prevailed before the Avar, it will want to return to 
it again. Few if any of the notes of the best banks, in the oldest and 
richest States, were then ever at par ; while the counterfeiter did as 
profitable a business as the banker, and all at the expense of the peo- 
ple. Scarcely a citizen who lived in that time, in any of the States, but 
suffered loss from such money ; and in many families of the land to- 



THE ISSUES OP 1892. 611 

day will be found the old bank bills of broken State banks — striking 
protests against the soundness of the system under which they were 
established. I fear the people do not realize the full force of the 
Democratic declaration in favor of State banks of issue. 

Let me give you in the briefest manner possible the condition of 
State bank money on December 1, 1859, as shown by Peterson's 
Philadelphia Counterfeit Detector and Bank-Note List, which I hold 
in my hand, and to which I now refer. The first announcement that 
greets you is made with respect to " the counterfeit 50's and lOO's on 
the Philadelphia Bank," with this warning in bold type, '■'■Look out 
for them.'''' Then follows the announcement, " Seventy-nine new 
counterfeits have been put in circulation within the last month, three 
being issues of Pennsylvania banks." On December 1, 1859, Phila- 
delphia had twenty-one banks, all at par, with the exception of the 
Bank of Pennsylvania, which was at a discount of 65 per cent ; and 
quite all, if not all, of their issues were counterfeited. There were 
eighty-one country banks, so called, in he State of Pennsj'lvania. 
Of these, only twenty-one were at par ; the notes of one being un- 
salable, and those of the other fifty-nine at a discount ranging from 
a half of 1 per cent to 90 per cent. 

In the State of Arkansas " all the banks are uncertain," according 
to the statement made here. In Alabama there were seven banks, 
six at a discount of 2 per cent, and the other at 1 per cent. In Con- 
necticut there were seventy-eight banks, with the notes of three un- 
salable, and those of seventy-five at a discount of from a quarter of 1 
per cent to 25 per cent. In Delaware there were ten banks, nine at 
par and one at a half of 1 per cent discount. In the District of Co- 
lumbia there were six banks, five at one half per cent discount, the 
other at 1 per cent. In Georgia there were thirty-one banks, all of 
them at a discount ranging from a half of 1 per cent to 10 per cent ; 
one quoted with the warning, " Doii't huy^'' and the notes of two 
others unsalable. The banks of Florida were not reported. In Illi- 
nois there were eighty-eight banks, not a single one of them at par, 
and the notes of nearly all at 2 per cent discount, and two of them at 
25 per cent discount. In Indiana there were forty banks, the notes 
of not one of them at par, those of most of them at \\ per cent dis- 
count, four at 20 per cent discount, and the notes of two unsalable. 
In Iowa there was the State Bank with twelve branches, all of them 
at a discount of 3 per cent. In Kentucky there were twelve banks, 
none at par, with a prevailing discount of 1 per cent, and with one 
bank doubtful. In Kansas there were four banks, the notes of three 



612 SPEECHES AND ADDRESSES OF WILLIAM McKINLEY. 

unsalable and the other pronounced " a logus concern.''^ In Louisi- 
ana there were thirteen banks, the notes of all of them at a discount 
of from one half of 1 per cent to three quarters of 1 per cent. 

In Maine there were eighty-three banks reported, with not one of 
them at par ; the average discount being one quarter of 1 per cent, 
with one of them at 10 per cent, one at 15 per cent, and one with its 
notes wholly unsalable. In Massachusetts there were 181 banks, with 
not a single one at par. The average discount there was a quarter of 
1 per cent, and all the notes of one were wholly unsalable. In Mary- 
land there were forty banks, with the notes of all at an average dis- 
count of one quarter of 1 per cent, those of one at a discount of 75 
per cent, the notes of another declared bogus, and those of two un- 
salable. In Minnesota there were twenty-five banks, all of which 
were pronounced doubtful. For Mississippi none of the banks are 
quoted, but all are pronounced '■'■ unc&rtain.''^ In Michigan there 
were six banks, of which the notes of four were at 1^ per cent discount, 
and of one at 5 per cent discount, the other not being quoted. In 
Missouri there were eleven banks, the prevailing discount being Hel- 
per cent. In Nebraska Territory there were four banks, three of 
them being too little known to be quoted, and the fourth declared to 
be a fraud. In Utah Territory the notes were declared unsalable. In 
New Hampshire there were fifty-one banks, with the notes of all at a 
quarter of 1 per cent discount. In New Jersey there were fifty-nine 
banks, of which twenty-one had their notes at par, those of the others 
being at a discount of from a quarter of 1 per cent to 50 per cent. 
In New York there were 346 banks, of which the notes of not one 
were at par. The prevailing discount in the sixty-one banks of New 
York city was one eighth of 1 per cent ; and in the banks through- 
out the State it was one half of 1 per cent, one being rated at 10 per 
cent discount, one at 15 per cent, two at 20 per cent, one at 25 per 
cent, and two at 30 per cent, and nearly all of them with counterfeits 
in circulation. In Ohio there were twenty-nine free banks, and the 
State Bank of Ohio, with forty branches. The prevailing discount 
was 1 per cent, with one at 3 per cent, one at 50 per cent, and one 
unsalable ; with counterfeits and " raised hills " without number. 
The warning is given as to all lO's — that unless it is clear that they 
are genuine they should be refused. In Rhode Island there were 
ninety banks, with a prevailing discount of a quarter of 1 per cent, 
one with a discount of 30 per cent, and two unsalable. In South 
Carolina there were nineteen banks, all at a discount of from a half to 
three quarters of 1 per cent. In Texas there was one bank, at a dis- 



THE ISSUES OF 1893. 613 

count of 10 per cent. In Tennessee there were thirty banks, the dis- 
count ranging from one quarter of 1 per cent to 35 per cent, and the 
notes of one unsalable. In Vermont there were forty-three banks, 
the notes of all at a quarter per cent discount. In Virginia there 
were thirty-one banks, the prevailing discount being five eighths of 1 
per cent, while one bank was at 20 per cent discount, one at 35 per 
cent, one unsalable, and several doubtful. In Wisconsin there were 
125 banks, with a prevailing discount of 2 per cent, with counterfeits 
in circulation on about one half of their issue. 

The total number of banks reported by Peterson's Philadelphia 
Counterfeit Detector, exclusive of the State bank branches, was 1,570. 
The banks reported by the same authority as " hrohen, closed, failed, 
fraudulent, and luortJiless,'''' are apportioned as follows : Pennsylvania, 
76, with 23 in Philadelphia ; Alabama, 8 ; Connecticut, 9 ; Delaware, 
2; District of Columbia, 37 ; Georgia, 32; Illinois, 24; Indiana, 76 ; 
Kansas, 1; Kentucky, 7; Louisiana, 15 ; Maine, 54; Massachusetts, 
60 ; Maryland, 22 ; Michigan, 23 ; Nebraska, 4 ; New Hampshire, 21 ; 
New York, 189; New Jersey, 33; North Carolina, 2; Ohio, 61; 
Ehode Island, 17 ; South Carolina, 2 ; Tennessee, 21 ; Vermont, 17; 
Virginia, 5 ; Wisconsin, 14 ; making a grand total of 832 banks 
whose notes were in circulation among the people, and had been re- 
ceived by them for their labor and their products, that were absolutely 
worthless and of no more value than the paper on which they were 
printed. Yet it is proposed by the Democratic platform of 1892 to 
make this condition again possible — aye, to invite it. Against it 
every workingman, every mechanic, every farmer and producer, and 
every business man should enter an emphatic protest, and should 
make that protest effective by voting against the party which dares 
to suggest so base a proposition. 

We have to-day the best currency in the world. Our gold, our 
silver, and our paper money are at par, each the equal of the other 
in debt-paying and legal-tender power. Our dollars are either coin 
dollars or paper dollars redeemable in coin. Our paper money is so 
good, and has been since the National system was inaugurated by 
Secretary Chase, that no noteholder has ever lost a dollar, and never 
can lose a dollar. Our notes are not only good at home, but they are 
good in every business corner of the world. The banker may fail, 
the bank may go into liquidation, the property and assets of the bank 
may be all squandered and lost, but the notes issued by the bank can 
suffer no loss or depreciation. They are good because the Govern- 
ment stands behind them as security, and holds for its indemnity 



614 SPEECHES AND ADDRESSES OF WILLIAM McKINLEY. 

the bonds of the United States, which are at a premium the world 
over. No man in this audience to-night who has National bank- 
notes in his purse knows what bank issued them, or in what city, 
county, State, or Territory the bank is located. He does not know 
whether they were issued in Pennsylvania or in Texas, and he does 
not care. They are good in every part of the Nation, whether issued 
in our greatest commercial cities, in the remotest town of the most 
distant State, or in some frontier trading-post of the poorest Territory 
in the Union. 

My fellow-citizens, there is one thing which this country can not 
afford to trifle with, and that is its currency, its measure of value, the 
money which passes among the people in return for their labor and 
the products of their toil or of their land. There is no contrivance 
so successful in cheating labor and the poor people of the country as 
unstable, worthless, and easily counterfeited currency. With our 
present paper-money system the citizen or the business man does not 
have to carry with him a Bank-Note Detector. They need not con- 
cern themselves lest the bank should fail. If the note is genuine, it 
is good and is always good. The money of this country should con- 
tinue forever to be National as its flag, as sacred as the National honor, 
and as sound as the Government itself. That is the character of the 
money that we have to-day. That is the kind of money which it is 
the paramount interest of every citizen of this country, no matter to 
what political party he may belong, to want to maintain and continue. 

The proposition to go back to State bank circulation is perhaps 
the worst manifestation of financial unsoundness that has ever ema- 
nated from the Democratic leaders, mischievous and prolific as they 
have been in such schemes for generations past. It is more danger- 
ous than their wildest propositions during the inflation era through 
which the country has happily passed, although inflation and repu- 
diation were encouraged by those who were then in control of the 
Democratic party. It is infinitely more harmful than the irredeem- 
able greenback in unlimited volume, as was once proposed by that 
party. It would be a thousand times more hurtful, more destructive 
to business and trade, more disastrous to every interest, than the free 
and unlimited coinage of silver— bad as that would be. For forty 
years the Democratic leaders have been unsound in their financial 
policies. This unsoundness has not always taken the same form, 
but its effect has always been to corrupt and debase the currency 
of the country. Driven from their opposition to resumption by 
the thoughtful men of their party, who voted against them when 



THE ISSUES OP 1892. 615 

that issue was presented, they then demanded an inflation of the cur- 
rency and the payment of the bonds in greenbacks. Eouted from 
that position by the sober sense of the country, they became the ad- 
vocates of the free and unlimited coinage of a dollar worth less than 
100 cents. Driven from that by party exigency, they now pronounce 
for a financial policy which would inflict upon the country the most 
worthless currency we have ever had. If this was all there was in the 
campaign, if that were the sole declaration made by the Democratic 
platform, it ought to be enough to defeat the party, which, in a de- 
liberate convention of the representatives of the National Democracy, 
has resolved to go back to the wildcat currency of forty years ago. 

The other question to which I ask your attention is that of the 
tariff, which is receiving more consideration — thoughtful considera- 
tion, I hope — at the hands of the American people than it has ever 
before received in any National contest. The issue is so sharply made 
between free trade and protection that every voter will have an oppor- 
tunity, such as he probably never had before, of voting his real con- 
victions upon this economic question. The platform of the Eepub- 
lican party declares for a tariff upon foreign products so levied as to 
meet the revenue needs of the Government and so discriminating as to 
give our own people and our own producers a preference in this market 
over the producers of the other countries of the world. The platform 
of the Democratic party declares for a tariff which shall be imposed 
on foreign products for revenue, and for no other purpose. It de- 
clares for a free-trade tariff, as free as the English tariff, which is 
pronounced by all political economists to be free trade, pure and sim- 
ple. It is by far the boldest utterance the party ever made in favor 
of the British doctrine. It not only declares for a revenue tariff 
without qualification or limitation, but declares that a tariff imposed 
for any other purpose is in contravention of the Constitution of the 
United States. It denounces protection as a fraud, as well as unwar- 
ranted by the organic law of the land. It is a little late, I submit, 
to raise the question of the constitutionality of the protective tariff, 
and can only be accounted for by a general tendency on the part of 
the Democratic leaders in the last National Convention, to go back- 
ward rather than forward. The power to levy duties not only for 
revenue but for the general welfare was never questioned by the men 
who framed the Constitution of the United States, who were its ear- 
liest and best interpreters. It was perfectly understood, at the time 
of the formation of the Federal Union and the adoption of the Con- 
stitution, that Congress not only had the power to levy protective 



616 SPEECHES AND ADDRESSES OF WILLIAM McKINLET. 

duties, but that it would exercise that power. Not only did the early 
statesmen so understand it, but the plain people of the country so 
understood and accepted it. 

It is an interesting fact that the first petition ever presented to 
the National House of Eepresentatives, as shown by the Journal of 
the House of April 1, 1789, was for the exercise of this power. It 
was from the city of Baltimore, and the minute about it was in these 
words : 

A petition of the tradesmen, manufacturers, and others, of Maryland, whose 
names are thereunto subscribed, was presented to the House, and read, stating 
certain matters, and praying an imposition of such duties on all foreign articles 
which can be made in America as will give a just and decided preference to the 
labors of the petitioners, and that there may be granted to them, in common 
with the manufacturers and mechanics of the United States, such relief as in the 
wisdom of Congress may appear proper. 

The third petition presented to the House was from the city of 
New York and Avas of the same purport. In the entry about it the 
doctrine of protection is well stated, in these words : 

A petition of the mechanics and manufacturers of the city of New York, 
whose names are thereunto subscribed, was presented to the House and read, 
setting forth that, in the present deplorable state of commerce and manufactures, 
they look with confidence to the operations of the new Government for a restora- 
tion of both, and that relief which they have so long and anxiously desired ; that 
they have subjoined a list of such articles as can be manufactured in the State 
of New York, and humbly pray the countenance and attention of the National 
Legislature thereto. 

The constitutionality of a protective tariff is not only sustained by 
the opinions of Washington, Madison, and Jefferson, but it received 
practical recognition in the first tariff law ever passed by the Con- 
gress of the United States, which was as early as July 1, 1789. You 
do not have to state the paragraphs and schedules of that law to as- 
certain its protective character, for you find in the very title of the 
bill the purpose of the law in language which can not be misunder- 
stood. Here it is : 

Whereas, It is necessary for the support of the Government, for the discharge 
of the debts of the Nation and the encouragement and protection of manufac- 
tures, that duties be laid on goods, wares, and merchandise imported ; therefore, 
be it resolved, etc. 

This bill was reported by Mr. Madison, a member of the Consti- 
tutional Convention, who afterward became President of the United 
States. It was passed by the unanimous vote of the House of Eepre- 
sentatives, by a majority of five to one in the Senate, and was signed 



THE ISSUES OF 1893. 617 

by George Washington. Jefferson, Jackson, Benton, Van Buren, 
Wright, and nearly all of the other illustrious men of the Democratic 
party have maintained the constitutionality of the j^rotective tariff. 
As early as 1832 the Democratic National platform, without question- 
ing the constitutionality of it (as does its successor of sixty years 
later), resolved, " that an adequate protection of American industry 
is indispensable to the prosperity of the country," and that the aban- 
donment of that policy would be attended with consequences ruinous 
to the interests of the Nation. During more than half of the life of 
the Government we have had in operation protective laws ; and the 
Supreme Court of the United States, in all those years, has never 
announced any opinion other than in support of the constitutionality 
of such laws, and within the last year has given its high judicial sanc- 
tion to the protective tariff law of 1890. 

Not only is a protective tariff within the authority of the Con- 
stitution, but in its operation and effect it has been a benefit and a 
blessing to the American people. It has been the opportunity of 
capital, industry, and labor, which has been so improved that, while 
we are yet one of the youngest nations of the world, w-e lead them 
all in manufactures, in mining, and in agriculture. Through the 
opportunity which protection has afforded, the prices of the every- 
day necessities of life have been reduced, and a scale of remunerative 
wages has been maintained such as is unknown in any other part 
of the world. While practically everything else for the use of man 
has fallen in price, the wages of labor have been kept up, and in some 
branches have been increased ; so that to-day, in the United States, a 
day's work will buy more of the comforts and necessities of life than 
a day's work would have ever brought in this country before, or in 
any other country of the world. The wealth of the country is more 
generally distributed among the masses of the people than in any 
other quarter of the globe. There are more homes owned by our 
fellow-citizens, and more comforts in those homes, than can be found 
among any like number of people or homes in any other country 
under the sun. The savings of labor which find their way into the 
savings banks of the country are without precedent or parallel any- 
where ; and there is in the savings banks of New York alone, owned 
by the laborers of that great Commonwealth, more money than is to 
be found in the entire savings of the laboring people of England. 
The protective tariffs of our history have been distinguished for the 
prosperity which they have brought to all our people, while the free- 
trade tariffs have been noted for general business depression, failures. 



CIS SPEECHES AND ADDRESSES OF WILLIAM McKIXLEY. 

and widespread prostration. Tried by any rule, tested by history or 
experience, protection has fulfilled every expectation, has met every 
emergency, either in war or in peace; has provided revenue for 
public purposes, and stimulated the highest development of our 
National resources. It has served the Treasury well in every re- 
quirement, and, while doing that, has served the people in pro- 
viding for them occupations at living and remunerative wages. 
Match it, if you can ! It has always been for the United States — 
for the progress, development, and unity of the Nation. It never 
struck a blow against the Government. Free trade has done this; 
both those who advocate it at home and those who advocate it 
abroad have not hesitated to make war upon this country. As a 
matter of history, free trade has more than once failed to provide 
the necessary revenues for the Government, and it has never failed to 
break down the industries and cripple the enterprises of the people. 
As a means of raising revenue a protective tariff is surer and safer 
than a revenue tariff. A revenue tariff proposes to do nothing else 
but raise revenue. It has no other aim or purpose, and disclaims any 
other. A protective tariff, therefore, does all that a revenue tariff 
does, or proposes to do, and with greater certainty. In addition, it 
opens opportunities for the capital of the country, invites it to invest 
in productive enterprises, and gives to labor, skill, and genius their 
highest rewards, while receiving from them the highest and best 
efficiency. 

Senator Hill, in his recent speech in Brookl}-n, rejects the tariff 
plank in the National j)latform of his party, but announces one for 
himself. His favors a tariff for revenue only, with incidental or acci- 
dental protection. But, that I may do the Senator no injustice, I will 
read his exact language as taken from his speech published in the 
Associated Press rej)ort. He said : 

We believe in revenue with incidental protection, and not in protection with 
incidental revenue. In so far as the tariff is necessary to meet the necessities of 
the Government, it may be imposed, and any other benefits which may be legiti- 
mately derived from its imposition may, and do necessarily, accompany it. If the 
burden imposed would operate to prevent foreign competition the benefit is indi- 
rect and unobjectionable. Mr. Harrison, in his ingenious letter of acceptance, 
endeavors to place our party in a false attitude by calling attention to the fact 
that, while our platform in 1884, readopted in 1888, contained an express plank 
upon this question of the equalization of wages, yet it was omitted in 1892, and 
asserts that we have changed our position. I beg to differ with him. There has 
been no change. It is not always practicable to place in a platform the details of 
proposed legislation. The platforms of 1884 and 1888 were elaborate and lengthy, 



THE ISSUES OP 1892. 619 

and it was desirable to simplify them. General principles were stated in 1892 
rather than particulars, as in 1884. There is no conflict between them. If I were 
asked to define as concisely as possible the whole Democratic policy, I should state 
it substantially as follows : " We favor a tariff for revenue only, limited to the 
necessities of the Government economically administered, and so adjusted in its 
application, as far as practicable, as to prevent unequal burdens, encourage pro- 
ductive industries at home, and afford just compensation to labor, but not to 
create or foster monopoly." These are the cardinal principles upon which the 
details of tariff legislation should be based. 

This platform of Mr. Hill's is all very well, and might go without 
serious controversy, as it has gone in many campaigns in the past, but 
for the fact that the Democratic National Convention by an over- 
whelming majority rejected it. He has only announced what the 
Committee on Platform of the National Convention proposed to the 
Convention, but which was swiftly and impressively rejected. It 
might also pass unchallenged but for the further fact that Mr. Cleve- 
land, the candidate of the party, has approved the Convention plat- 
form in his Madison Square Garden speech, and accepted the nomi- 
nation on that platform. This ipse dixit of Mr. Hill's might be ac- 
cepted as the cardinal doctrine of the Democratic party, if the Presi- 
dent of the Democratic National Convention — the Hon. William L. 
Wilson, of West Virginia, one of the most distinguished tariff reform- 
ers in the country — had not characterized the language which Mr. 
Hill employed and such limitations as lie makes as a " straddle " and 
" a piece of ill-jointed patchwork." 

Listen to what he says in the North American Review of the pres- 
ent month. This is his language : 

When the recent Convention met at Chicago, the representatives of the Demo- 
cratic party were united and zealous in their devotion to tariff reform, and full of 
the confidence born of many victories freshly won under its banner. They ex- 
pected a clear and courageous statement of fundamental party principle and of 
the party's attitude to existing law. The resolution, as reported by the Commit- 
tee, left nothing to be desired on the latter head (that is, the party's attitude to 
the tariff law of 1890), but, instead of the former, contained a preliminary para- 
graph or two in which, with much that was admirable, appeared some of the 
familiar but now unsatisfactory phrases of the makeshift of 1884. The Con- 
vention, with very slight protest from the Committee on Platform, took the 
risk of striking out these phrases and their setting, and of inserting in place of 
them a clear declaration of fundamental party doctrine. The inserted words 
are these: "We denounce Republican protection as a fraud, a robbery of the 
great majority of the American people for the benefit of the few. Wo declare 
it to be a fundamental principle of the Democratic party that the Federal Gov- 
ernment has no constitutional power to impose and collect tariff duties except for 
the purpose of revenue only, and demand that the collection of such taxes shall 
40 



620 SPEECHES AND ADDRESSES OF WILLIAM McKINLEY. 

be limited to the necessities of the Government honestly and economically admin- 
istered." This is no new doctrine. It is a return to the frank and explicit declara- 
tions of 1876 and 1880, showing that the party is now ready to avow in the thick 
of battle what it then avowed before the combat opened. There is little need for 
comment upon the paragraphs of the report of the Committee which was stricken 
out in Convention, They were no longer aids but incumbrances in the fight. 
The temper and courage of the party are mightily different in 1892 from what 
they were in 1884. What was necessary prudence then would be cowardice now. 

"Will Senator Ilill please observe this scorching rebuke adminis- 
tered to him by the President of the Democratic National Conven- 
tion ? I quote further : 

The Convention responded fully and heartily to the feeling of the party it 
represented. It showed its confidence in tariff reform as the great and winning 
issue by its nominating Mr. Cleveland in the face of warning that would have 
driven it from a man who did not also stand for a cause. It meant that there 
should be nothing ambiguous about the party's attitude to the cause, and that 
the statement of its principles should not be overlaid with cumulative limitations. 
In all this the Convention was right. We have passed that stage in the great 
tariff controversy where it is necessary or proper to encumber party platforms 
with limitations, promises, and protests. 

They had reached a stage in the fight, in the ojDiuion of the ma- 
jority, when they could speak the truth, and announce, without quib- 
bling or qualification, the party doctrine ; and they did it. It will 
hardly be claimed that Mr. Hill is in a position to authorize him to 
speak for his party ; for not only was his tariff plank (which he an- 
nounced in his Brooklyn speech) repudiated by the recent National 
Convention, but (speaking with the greatest respect and with entire 
courtesy) I trust it will not be regarded as unwarranted in honorable 
debate for me to remind him that he also was repudiated by the Na- 
tional Convention. He wants to perpetuate a " straddle," to use the 
language of Mr. Wilson. He wants to be " a Democrat," and, while 
alleging that he is for a tariff for revenue only, he is in favor of inci- 
dental protection. That is, he is in favor of protection by casualty 
— for tariff for revenue only with protection hit or miss. If protec- 
tion is a fraud, as the Democratic platform declares, then incidental 
protection is an incidental fraud. Mr. Hill can not change the issue. 
He seeks now to place the party where for so many years that dis- 
tinguished Pennsylvanian, so long an honorable Representative from 
this city in the National House of Representatives, Samuel J. Ran- 
dall, kept his party ; but it will never be forgotten — certainly never 
in this city — how that great commoner was ignored and sought to be 
humiliated by those who are now in the control of the Democratic 



THE ISSUES OP 1892. 621 

party. Mr. Hill can not turn the tide which has set in against him 
by the free traders of his party by any such subterfuge. 

Mr. President, the new tariff law has now been in operation in all 
its provisions about fifteen months; and what it has done for the 
United States or against the United States can be seen and read of all 
men. The Democratic platform at Chicago announces it as a " cul- 
minating atrocity," and points to the dullness and distress, the wages 
and the reductions and strife, as the best and most forcible evidence 
that no prosperity has resulted from the act of 1890, and promises its 
repeal as one of the beneficial results that will follow the action of the 
people in intrusting power to the Democratic party. Now, let us see 
what this " culminating atrocity " has accomplished within the last 
year. First, what has been the effect of the tariff law of 1890 upon 
the revenues of the Government ? It was charged at the time of 
its passage that it would not reduce but increase the revenues of 
the Treasury and the burdens of the people. Has it given any 
relief in the direction of reduced taxation? In the fiscal year of 
1893, according to the report of the Secretary of the Treasury, the 
revenue collected in that year was $51,367,650 less than the revenue 
collected for the fiscal year ending June 30, 1890. So that the 
burden of more than $51,000,000 of annual " taxes " has been removed 
from the shoulders of the American people. How has it affected our 
foreign commerce ? Let the oflftcial figures answer. The total 
foreign commerce for 1892 was 11,857,697,693, an increase of up- 
ward of $200,000,000 over the total commerce of 1890, and of 
$128,000,000 over that of 1891. How has it affected our exports, 
our sale of American products abroad ? In 1892 the value of ex- 
ports of merchandise was $1,030,278,030, an increase of $172,449,346 
over 1890. Our exports of cotton in 1892 exceeded in value those 
of 1890 by the sum of $7,492,449, though the price of cotton was 
much lower in 1892 than in 1890. The value of the exports of 
breadstuffs in 1892 over 1890 was $144,437,190. The value of our 
exports of breadstuffs (which includes dairy products) shows an 
increase of $4,000,000 in 1892 over 1890. The value of our ex- 
ports of cattle, sheep, and hogs in 1892 was $3,211,031 in excess of 
1890. The increase of the value of exports of breadstuffs, provisions, 
cattle, sheep, hogs, (all of which are classed as agricultural prod- 
ucts), in 1892 was $159,288,323 in excess of 1890. The value of our 
other exports during 1892 shows an increase over 1890 of $11,199,860. 
The value of exports of domestic manufactures shows an increase over 
1890 of $8,384,357. This statement shows our sales abroad during 



622 SPEECHES AND ADDRESSES OP WILLIAM McKINLEY. 

the twelve months in which every part of the new tariff law has been 
in operation, and is an unanswerable refutation of the oft-made as- 
sertion that the law would shut out our products from foreign 
markets. 

Now turn to the other side. What have we bought abroad ? The 
value of our imports during the fiscal year of 1892 was $827,401,573, 
or 838,000,000 more than we imported during the fiscal year of 1890. 
As showing the operations of the new law, nothing is more gratifying 
than the increase of free imports made possible by that law. In 1890 
the value of our free imports was S2G5,668,C29, and in 1892 the value 
of free imports Avas 8458,000,772. In 1890 the percentage of free 
imports was 33.66 ; in 1892 it was 55.35. There was an increase in 
the value of free imports in 1892 over 1890 of 8192,332,143, the de- 
crease in value of merchandise paying duty being $154,240,979. The 
duty, if calculated j^er cajrita of the population in 1892, is 82.67 ; in 
1872 it was 85.28 per capita, or lower than it had been at any time 
since 1863. In 1890 it was 83.62, and for ten years prior to 1891 
it averaged that sum. So that it is now between 95 and 96 cents 
less per capita than the average for the preceding ten years. The 
increase of the free list is made up largely of articles which we can 
not produce in our own country, or which for the most part we 
have been unable to produce in quantities adequate for our home 
consumption. There are transferred from the dutiable to the free 
list such articles as sugar, molasses or fibers, and textile grasses. We 
have a decrease of 889,137,854 in sugar and molasses, resulting from 
the transfer of these articles to the free list. There was a decrease in 
the value of manufactures of wool imported of 821,000,000 ; a de- 
crease in the value of flax, hemp, etc., of more than 816,000,000 ; a 
decrease of over 813,099,000 in the imports of iron, steel, and tin plate ; 
and a decrease of 87,153,000 in the manufactures of silk, and of 
87,274,000 in leaf tobacco. This decrease in the importations of 
manufactures of wool, iron, steel, tin plate, silk, and leaf tobacco has 
increased the production of those articles in the United States and 
kept that vast sum of money at home, to the advantage of our own 
producers and our own people. 

The decrease in the imports of agricultural products is striking 
and impressive. The importation of horses, cows, eggs, hemp, flax- 
seed, jute, textile grasses, oats, barley, rye, and hops was 820,000,000 less 
in 1892 than in 1890. If the tariff on sugar iiad remained as under 
the old law, or as the Mills bill placed it, and we had imported the 
same quantity in 1892, the tariff upon it would have amounted to up- 



THE ISSUES OF 1892. 623 

ward of 890,000,000, all of which would have been paid by the con- 
sumer here. The sugar tax is purely a revenue tax. It is a favorite 
Democratic tax — one that party have always advocated, and such as 
they would reimpose if they had the power to-day. It must not be 
forgotten that the entire Democratic party of the House and Senate 
opposed the repeal of the sugar tariff in 1890, because it was a 
revenue tariff. Such a tariff is always paid by the consumer ; and 
with this enormous importation, nearly one hundred millions of dol- 
lars would have come out of the pockets of the consumers of the 
United States. But it is said that the bounty is even more odious 
than the tariff. The bounty paid to the domestic producer of sugar 
in 1892 was less than $8,000,000 ; so that the people actually saved 
after paying this bounty, more than 182,000,000. 

What new markets have been reached since the passage of the new 
law ? The trade we have opened up under the third section of the 
tariff law, known as " the reciprocity clause," should have the atten- 
tion of every voter of the country. The increase since the passage of 
the law of our trade with Brazil, Cuba, Porto Rico, Santo Domingo, 
the British West Indies, and Guatemala, with the gain in our exports 
of hogs to Denmark, Germany, and Italy, make an increase in the 
enormous sum of $10,286,881. In the five months ending June 30, 
1892, the total exports from the United States to Germany, being 
almost wholly of provisions and other agricultural products (including 
breadstuffs), were $12,748,513 in excess of the exports for 1891. This 
is, in brief, our foreign and domestic trade under the first twelve 
months of the new tariff law. 

What has been the effect of this law upon prices and wages ? 
This every citizen, every workingman, can know and does know for 
himself. The laborer knows what he gets for his day's work, and 
knows what he pays for the necessaries of life and for the uses of his 
household. So tlaat, however much campaign orators may differ 
upon this subject, the individual citizen who has a vote to cast on the 
8th of November knows the wages he receives and the relation of 
those wages to the purchase of the necessities of his household. We 
have, however, some testimony upon the subject which is entitled to 
our confidence. A subcommittee of the Senate Finance Committee, 
composed as it was of four Republicans and two Democrats (all of 
them distinguished for their learning on economic subjects), report 
that there has been a decline in the necessaries of life of three fourths 
of 1 per cent, and an advance in wages of three and one fourth per 
cent, from the date of the passage of the new law up to May, 1, 1892, 



624 SPEECHES AND ADDRESSES OP WILLIAM McKINLEY. 

as compared with a like period prior to the adoption of the tariff law 
of 1890. 

The Commissioner of Labor for the State of Massachusetts, Mr. 
Horace Q. Wadlin, who I am informed is a careful statistician, in his 
recent report, makes a valuable contribution on this subject. The 
report is based on returns from 4,865 establishments, having a total 
value of $069,935,835. The total amount disbursed in wages in 1891 
was $130,416,248, as against $126,080,303 in 1890— an increase of 
$3,335,945, or 2.65 per cent. Another table showed the average yearly 
earnings per capita to have increased almost one per cent. Still 
another table is devoted to 75 chief industries, and he gives the in- 
crease of the year in wages paid as 2.65 per cent, the table having 
this addendum : 

The total amount paid in wages to the establishments represented in the sev- 
enty-five industries considered increased 2.65 per cent. In carpetings the increase 
was 3.66 per cent ; in cotton goods, 4.67 per cent ; in machines and machinery, 
3.58 per cent ; in metals and metallic goods, 3.28 per cent ; in paper and paper 
goods, 4.70 per cent ; and in woolen goods and worsted goods, 7.15 per cent and 
1.58 per cent respectively. In boots and shoes, however, the total amount paid 
in wages decreased 3.75 per cent, and in leather 8.82 per cent. The average 
yearly earnings per individual, without regard to sex or age, employed in the sev- 
enty-five industries, were $437.93 in 1890 and $441.90 in 1891, an increase of 0.91 
per cent. The range from highest to lowest average yearly earnings was from 
$676.35 to $278.93 in 1890, and from $687.76 to $281.22 in 1891. The highest 
earnings ruled in the industries demanding greater skill and employing males 
chiefly, and in the lower factory industries employing a large proportion of 
females and young persons. 

The report of the Commissioner of Labor of the State of New 
York — Mr. Peck — is confirmatory of the figures already given, show- 
ing that in the great Empire State not only have the prices of house- 
hold goods diminished, but the wages of labor in many industries 
have increased ; while the report of the State Bank Inspector or 
Commissioner shows how vastly the savings of labor have accumu- 
lated, as represented by the deposits in the savings banks of that 
State. The Commissioner of Labor for the State of Indiana, whose 
report has been recently published, fully sustains the figures or con- 
clusions of the reports already made. These figures have increased 
value because of their nonpartisan character. The Labor Commis- 
sioner of New York is a Democrat ; so is the Commissioner of Indi- 
ana ; and I doubt not they have given these figures reluctantly, under 
the requirements of their oaths of office, believing with Mr. Cleve- 
land that " public office is a public trust." These reports, coming, as 



THE ISSUES OF 1892. 625 

they do, thick and fast, have confounded the Democratic leaders, and 
have scattered to the winds their baseless predictions. Facts and ex- 
perience have so overtaken their false prophecies that they have 
sought to destroy the force of them by extraordinary measures. They 
have sought to restrain the facts by the process of the courts. They 
may arrest Mr. Peck, but, thank God, they can not arrest the pros- 
perity of the country. That is beyond their control. What a spec- 
tacle to behold — a public officer in the State of New York indicted 
for demonstrating by facts and figures the prosperity of his State and 
the well-being of its citizens ! 

It is true there has been some advance in the price of agricultural 
products, but in all articles of manufacture made possible by protec- 
tion, prices to the consumer have not risen, but in the great majority 
of cases have fallen. What effect has the new law had in increasing 
domestic production and in a corresponding demand for labor ? We 
are now manufacturing a great variety of the finest cotton and woolen 
goods, all of which were imported prior to 1890. We are not only 
making plush in Philadelphia, but we are making lace in Texas. 
The manufacture of woolen goods, which was depressed and un- 
profitable for a long time, is in a most prosperous condition to-day. 
The Boston Herald, the leading tariff-reform paper in the country, 
under date of July 15, 1892, said : 

Where is the idle woolen mill to-day? Not only is the great majority of the 
woolen mills employed, but many of the manufacturers are contemplating en- 
largements, and improvements are already begun. What does all this mean ? It 
means simply the greatest consumption of wool in this country that has been 
known for years. 

It means more than that : It means that labor is employed, and 
profitably employed. Thousands of men are employed in new in- 
dustries. We have demonstrated that we can manufacture tin plate 
in the United States, and do it successfull)^ We have produced in 
the last twelve months, of tin and terne plate, 13,646,719 pounds, and 
over 5,000,000 pounds were had from black plates manufactured in 
the United States. The Democratic success in 1890 retarded the 
growth of this industry, and deterred much capital from being in- 
vested which otherwise would have been invested, but notwithstand- 
ing this the industry has forged to the front, and if the protective 
policy be maintained in the contest of 1892, it will be only a short 
time until we will manufacture all we consume. The new tariff law 
has revived the cotton-tie industry of the United States, which the 
foreigner had controlled absolutely since 1883. We are now produc- 



626 SPEECHES AND ADDRESSES OF WILLIAM McKINLEY. 

ing substantially all the cotton ties used in the South, and the price 
is lower than it was before the enactment of the law. Here is anoth- 
er of the many cases where an increased duty has not added to but 
has resulted in reducing the cost to the consumer. The knitting in- 
dustry has been greatly stimulated all over the country. There are 
three knitting mills in Hudson, Columbia County, New York, and 
twelve in all the country. They give employment to 2,000 hands, and 
their annual product is about five millon dozen knit underwear, the 
selling value of which is $2,500,000. In these mills there is disbursed 
$750,000 annually in wages. Before the new law went into effect the 
country was flooded with foreign materials. So excessive were the 
importations prior to that date that all the foreign goods have as 
yet not been disposed of, and thus the new law has not had a fair 
chance to vindicate itself. Shut-downs were frequent ; but lately 
the market has recovered from the effect of the fresh importation. 
A new impetus has been given to the American mills, and now the 
domestic manufacturer has so many orders that he has in many in- 
stances enlarged his mill, and has had to run day and night. 

Here in your city you have a new industry made possible by the 
law of 1890. I can not better present it than to quote from a letter 
received from J. J. Allen's Sons, chemical manufacturers, of No. 2 
Chestnut Street, Philadelphia. The letter reads as follows : 

The phosphorus consumed in the United States for many years has been fur- 
nished almost exclusively by a very aggressive English manufacturer, who was 
determined to control this market, and has repeatedly announced that he has 
put aside a large sum of money, as a permanent fund, to be used in ruining any 
one who felt disposed to go into the manufacture of phosphorus. In pursuance 
of this policy, and under the duty of 10 cents per pound which obtained before 
the passage of the McKinley law, whenever the manufacture of phosphorus was 
attempted in this country, the English manufacturers lowered the price to a point 
at or below the cost of making it in this country until they succeeded in closing 
up the American works, when they promptly raised the price again, and main- 
tained a high price on the goods until the American factory attempted to start up 
again, when the same programme was repeated. The works which we are oper- 
ating were built in 1871, which was the first attempt to make phosphorus in this 
country. It was then selling here at $1.20 per pound. The American works ran 
along until 1873, by which time the English manufacturers reduced the price to 
76 cents per pound, thereby ruining the American manufacturers and causing the 
works to be sold out by the sheriff. The price was then restored to $1.10, and 
remained at about this price until the American works started up again under 
new management in March, 1874. The price was then gradually cut until it reached 
55 cents, which at that time was below the cost of manufacture in this country, 
and the American works were accordingly closed. A higher price was again 
placed on the article, but since the passage of the McKinley law, in which the 



THE ISSUES OF 1892. 627 

duty on phosphorus was increased from 10 cents to 20 cents per pound, the Eng- 
lish manufacturers have been offering the goods in small lots at 45 cents per 
pound, which is the lowest price it has ever been sold for in this country. Our 
works are running on full time, and are doing a prosperous business, which we 
think is one of the most instructive object-lessons in regard to the effects of the 
protective tariff. 

This letter well illustrates the struggle and success of American 
manufacturers and the benefit to all of a protective tariff. There 
are many other industries and enterprises that have been stimulated 
by the new law and by which the great mass of our countrymen 
have been benefited. Where, I ask, are the " disasters and dullness," 
as depicted by the Democratic National platform? Prosperity every- 
where abounds, and the country at large, in its business operations, 
has never been in a better or more healthful condition than it is to- 
day. I can not believe that the people of this country will consent to 
the overthrow of the economic policy under which they have enjoyed 
such unexampled prosperity. I can not believe that the people of this 
country will reverse a policy which has been in operation now for more 
than thirty years of our history, and which presents at its close results 
which could not have been attained by any other system and which cer- 
tainly have not been accomplished in any other country of the world. 
I can not believe that the people of this country can be induced to 
return to free trade and wildcat money — free trade which will dis- 
turb all values, revolutionize the business of the country, and reduce 
the wages of labor, and a State-bank circulation which will bring dis- 
aster to the laborers and producers of the country. When a man gives 
a full day's work to his employer he is entitled to be paid in a dollar 
worth 100 cents, whether he works under free trade or under protec- 
tion. Free trade will bring down the wages of our producers to the 
level of that of their former rivals, and State-bank circulation will rob 
them still further of their earnings by compelling them to take, in pay- 
ment for their labor, a debased and worthless currency. The adoption 
of either or both of these platform declarations of the Democratic 
party is fraught with the gravest consequences, which every good 
citizen should unite to avert. 

Mr. President, and my fellow-citizens, there is no honorable place 
in American politics for a party which bases its claims to public con- 
fidence on the misfortunes of the people. There can be no perma- 
nently successful place in America for a party Avhich appeals to pas- 
sion, prejudice, and ignorance, and which would build itself upon the 
disappointments of the people and the disasters of the country. We 



628 SPEECHES AND ADDRESSES OF WILLIAM McKINLEY. 

are getting on better than any other nation. In everything that goes 
to make a nation strong we lead the world, in spite of the opposition 
and discouragements within and without. It will be a sad day for this 
country in all its varied interests when we shall have abandoned Ke- 
publican principles and Eepublican policies. But I have detained 
you already too long. I can not better close my address to-night than 
by quoting from a speech made by Daniel Webster on the subject of 
the tariff, in this city, on December 2, 1846, at a public dinner given 
by the business men of that early day to that distinguished orator and 
statesman. The Hon. Samuel Beck presided. Mr. Webster said : 

Will you pardon me, gentlemen, for recalling to the recollection of your older 
fellow-citizens an interesting celebration \yhich took place in this city on the 
4th of July, 1788? On that day the citizens of Philadelphia celebrated the Dec- 
laration of Independence made by the thirteen United States of America on 
the 4th of July, 1776, and the establishment of the Constitution or frame of gov- 
ernment then recently adopted by ten States. A procession was formed, the 
military and companies of the various trades and professions uniting in it. It 
was organized and commanded by Generals Mifflin and Stewart and some other 
well known personages. The various companies displayed their flags and banners 
with appropriate devices and mottoes. Richard Bache, Esq., on horseback, as a 
herald, attended by a trumpeter, proclaimed " A New Era." The Hon. Peter 
Muhlenberg carried a blue flag on which were the words, in silver letters, " 17th 
of September, 1787." Chief Justice McKean and his associates, in their robes of 
office, were seated in a lofty car shaped like an eel and drawn by six white horses. 
The Chief Justice supported a tall staff on the top of which was the cap of lib- 
erty. Under the cap appeared " The New Constitution," framed and ornamented, 
and immediately under this were the words, " The People," in large gold letters. 
Next followed varied corps and troops, associations, consuls, collectors, judges, 
and others. Then came the Agricultural Society, with its flag and motto, "Ven- 
erate the Plow " ; then the Manufacturing Society, with their spinning and 
carding machines, looms, and other machinery and implements. Mr. Gallaudet 
carried the flag, the device on which was a beehive standing in the beams of the 
sun, bees issuing from the hive ; and on the flag of blue silk the motto, " In its 
rays we shall feel new vigor." This was followed by a carriage holding men 
weaving and printing. A lady and her four daughters sat upon it, penciling a 
piece of chintz, all dressed in cotton of their own manufacture ; and over them all, 
on a lofty staff, was a flag with this motto, " May the Union never forget the 
manufacturers of America." The Federal ship " Union " followed next, and then 
boat builders, sail makers, merchants, and others interested in commerce. Then 
other trades such as cabinet or chair makers, with a flag and motto, " By unity 
we support society." Next came the bricklayers, with a flag on which there was a 
brickyard and a kiln burning, hands at work, and in the distance a Federal City 
building, with this motto, " It was hard in Egypt, but this prospect makes it 
easy." Then came the potters, bearing on their flag the motto, " May industry 
ever be encouraged ! " After them various trades came, and then the whipmakers 
and canemakers, with the motto, "Let us encourage our own manufactures." 



I 



THE ISSUES OP 1893. 629 

After them came still others, and among the last the brewers, with a flag with 
this motto, " Home brewed is the best." And now I ask you, gentlemen, whether 
these sentiments and banners indicated that the Government was to lay duties 
only for revenue and without respect to home industry ? Do you believe the doc- 
trines of Mr. Polk, or those of the citizens of Philadelphia in 1788 ? 

It is said that the great audience shouted " eighty-eight ! " and 
that there was long-continued clieering. If Mr. Webster could look 
down upon this wonderful city to-night with its population of 
1,200,000, with its factories and forges, its shipyards and its com- 
merce, its manufactures of every form and variety, its well-paid 
artisans and happy homes, he would not need to be told that Phila- 
delphia, during all the forty-six years which have gone by since his 
great speech was delivered, has always steadily adhered to the patri- 
otic policy of the men of 1788, without the shadow of turning; he 
would know and rejoice that in 1893, on the 8th day of November, it 
would again assert its unwavering faith in the sentiments on the ban- 
ners of 1788 by voting for Harrison and Reid, who represent the 
same sentiments and carry the same banners. 



DEDICATION OF THE OHIO BUILDmO. 

Speech at the Columbian Celebration at Chicago, III., 

October 22, 1892. 

President Peabodt and the Members of the World's 
Fair Commission of Ohio, and my Fellow-citizens : I receive 
the Ohio building, the ke3-s of which you have just handed me, in be- 
half of the State, and for the uses of its people. I believe all will agree 
that your work has been well and faithfully performed, and that the 
Ohio home you have provided will be both cheerful and comfortable, 
as it is centrally and conveniently located. It is not commodious 
enough to hold all of the Ohio people who will attend the great 
exposition, but they will not all be here at the same time, and I hope, 
therefore, that it will be found adequate for the purposes designed. 
The assemblage of so large a number of Ohio men and women, 
with the State officials, Senators and Eepresentatives in Congress, 
the members of the Legislature, a worthy representation of the Ohio 
National Guard, and an ex-President of the United States, whom 
we all delight to honor, is of itself an event of historical interest. 
We meet in the chief city of the great Northwest — a city which has 
demonstrated within the past two days that Congress made no 
mistake when it assigned to its enterprising citizens the preparation 
for the groat exhibition which is to commemorate the discovery of 
America. We are all proud of Chicago and of the great State of 
Illinois. 

Ohio, the first-born of the States carved out of the great North- 
west, greets her younger sister, and congratulates her that within her 
jurisdiction the greatest exhibition of the advancement of the arts 
and manufactures and of civilization ever known to the world is soon 
to be assembled. In participating in the dedicatory exercises we not 
only join in the world's tribute to the courage and perseverance and 
the inspired purpose of Columbus, but we do homage to the wonder- 
ful products of man's genius and skill which are soon to be unfolded 



DEDICATION OP THE OHIO BUILDING. 631 

before the vision of mankind. This exposition is not only a thank- 
offering to the memory of the discoverer of the New World ; it is 
in its highest sense the hallelujah of the universe for the triumph 
of civil liberty and Christian civilization. Columbus himself said 
he " only opened the gates " ; those who came after builded, and how 
well, will be shown in these vast and imposing structures in 1893. 
Here in the New World on the North American continent, in the 
United States of America, the Almighty has permitted man the full 
development of his God-given rights and faculties, and opened up to 
him the widest possibilities and the attainment of the highest destiny. 
Here as nowhere else has been wrought out the great problem of a 
free and self-governed people, and the advantages and blessings 
springing therefrom. Ohio has performed no insignificant part in 
the advanced position which the country now occupies. Her people 
have given their energy and enterprise and their blood without stint 
for the accomplishment of what we enjoy to-day. Columbus, in one 
of his letters to Isabella describing the land and people he discovered, 
enthusiastically declared : 

This country excels all others as far as the day surpasses the night in splen- 
dor. The natives love their neighbor as themselves, their conversation is the 
sweetest imaginable, their faces always smiling, and so gentle are they that I 
swear to your highness there is not a better people in the world. 

We can almost imagine Columbus had Ohio and her people in 
mind when he wrote these words. Ohio is the gateway of both the 
South and the West, and she possesses unequaled facilities for both 
industry and distribution. With such a territory, and the progressive 
population we possess, under our just laws, Ohio has surpassed the wild- 
est dreams of her founders. It was as William P. Cutler, the son of 
the founder of the Ohio Company, said, "Massachusetts and Vir- 
ginia joined in holy wedlock, and Ohio was the firstborn." We are 
justly proud of our State. In the Centennial World's Fair in 1876, in 
the city of Philadelphia, Ohio made suitable demonstrations of her ad- 
vancement. She will now show the marvelous progress she has made 
in the succeeding sixteen years. In that period her population has 
increased over 30 per cent, and to-day our State possesses nearly 
4,000,000 citizens, over 74 per cent of whom were born in the State. 
What a bond of union among Ohio people, connected by ties of birth ! 
What a permanent element of citizenship this constitutes ; and may 
it not account for that native pride, that affectionate regard, that 
tender love for the old State which beats in the heart of every 
Ohioan? 



632 SPEECHES AND ADDRESSES OF WILLIAM McKINLEY. 

It is gratifying to know that the children of Ohio enjoy the very 
best opportunities for education. It is noteworthy that Ohio employs 
25,000 teachers, and that a half million of children daily crowd the 
doorways of her schoolrooms. Is not this a promising assurance for 
the future of our great State ? I can not refrain from expressing in 
this presence the pride that I felt at the appearance and bearing of 
the National Guard of the State, and the other Ohio military com- 
panies, which have participated in the events of this week. It is not 
generally known, but ought to be, that this large body of men came 
here to participate in the opening of the World's Exposition volun- 
tarily, and with no expense to the State. I know of no better ex- 
hibition of interest and loyalty anywhere, and am certain it will not 
pass unappreciated. Their presence has contributed much to the 
success of the demonstration, and has filled Ohioans with pride. 
The Suj^reme Court, the Legislature of the State, and all the State 
officials and members of Congress whose presence we observe to-day, 
have also given to all Ohioans special and peculiar pleasure. 

This, however, Mr. President, is but the beginning of Ohio's part in 
the Columbian Exposition. She will be here when the world assembles 
at this place — here with the fruits of her skill, genius, and invention, 
the products of her fields as well as of her factories, and I am sure 
no State in the Union will present a greater variety of productions, 
or better. It should be the aim of every citizen of the State to have 
Ohio appear at her best ; her rank must be maintained ; she must be 
kept to the front. Upon the Commission, which has thus far done 
so well, very grave responsibilities still rest, and I confidently trust 
to them, with the co-operation of the Legislature, to see that Ohio 
does not lose, but gains, in the respect and admiration of all the peo- 
ple, and makes valuable contributions to the world's storehouse of 
learning. 



THE DEFEAT OF 1892. 

In Response to the Toast, " The Eepublican Party," at the 
Lincoln Banquet of the Ohio Republican League, at 
Columbus, Ohio, February 14, 1893. 

Mr. President and Gentlemen of the Ohio Republican 
League : The Republican party values its principles no less in defeat 
than in victory. It holds to them after a reverse, as before, because it 
believes in them ; and believing in them, is ready to battle for them. 
They are not espoused for mere policy, nor to serve in a single con- 
test. They are set deep and strong in the hearts of the party, and 
are interwoven with its struggles, its life, and its history. Without 
discouragement, our great party reaffirms its allegiance to Republican 
doctrine, and with unshaken confidence seeks again the public judg- 
ment through public discussion. The defeat of 1893 has not made 
Republican principles less true nor our faith in their ultimate triumph 
less firm. The party accepts with true American spirit the popular 
verdict, and, challenging the interpretation put upon it by our polit- 
ical opponents, takes an appeal to the people, whose court is always 
open and whose right of review is never questioned. 

The Republican party, which made its first appearance in a Na- 
tional contest in 1856, has lost the Presidency but three times in 
thirty-six years, and only twice since 1860. It has carried seven Presi- 
dential elections out of ten since its organization. It has more than 
once witnessed an apparent condemnation of Republican policy 
swiftly and conclusively reversed by a subsequent and better-con- 
sidered popular verdict. When defeat has come it has usually fol- 
lowed some measure of public law or policy where sufficient time had 
not elapsed to demonstrate its wisdom and expediency, and where 
the opposing party by reason thereof enjoyed the widest range for 
popular prejudice and exaggerated statement and misrepresentation. 
Of the fitness of the Republican party for public trust, its record for 
thirty years is its best testimonial. In this particular it is unmatched. 



Qo^ SPEECHES AND ADDRESSES OF WILLIAM McKINLEY. 

It never lacked courage when in power to put into public law its de- 
clared purposes, and the statutes of the United States register its 
proudest achievements. For more than a quarter of a century it has 
made the laws of the country, which have withstood every assault, 
and in the end have won public approval. We are living under these 
laws now, and except for the uncertainty hanging over us by reason 
of the election of 1892, the country is in a most prosperous and 
assuring condition. Xothing but the result of that election can 
stand in the way of our continued prosperity. If we could strike 
from tlie history of the country all that has been done and accom- 
plished through the agency of the Republican party, what would we 
have left? Little to be proud of. Repudiation of the public faith; 
a disordered currency ; a bankrupt treasury ; a broken Union, with 
discordant and warring States ; a dishonored flag ; human slavery 
with the lash and chains and the auction block, not in the South 
alone, but in the great free Northwest as well ; a discredited name among 
the nations of the earth, and the universal verdict that free govern- 
ment had failed. If, since the war, the Democratic party could have 
made effective in administration and legislation the declarations of 
its National platforms, what would we have witnessed? Repudia- 
tion of the Constitutional Amendments ! Repudiation of the war 
debt ! The wildest inflation of irredeemable currency ! The repeal 
of the Resumption Act ! British free trade and its dire conditions ! 

We do not shrink from contrast. In 1861, when the Democratic 
party went out of power, the total wealth of the country was $10,000,- 
000,000 ; in 1893, when the Republican party goes out of power, the 
wealth of the country is more than 163,000,000,000. We had estab- 
lished since October 6, 1890, the date when the new tariff law went 
into effect, up to election day last November, 345 new manufacturing 
enterprises, and had extended 108. The new capital invested is over 
$40,000,000, and the additional employes required are 37,285. We 
have not revised our views, nor reversed our lines, notwithstanding 
the Democratic victory of 1892. We still do not believe that Repub- 
lican protection is a " fraud and a robbery " ; nor that it is " uncon- 
stitutional " ; nor do we believe that the tariff law of 1890 was or is 
" the culminating atrocity of class legislation," nor that reciprocity is 
a " sham," nor that State bank money should constitute the " cur- 
rency to measure the exchanges of the people." We dissent from the 
Democratic National platform of 1892 in each and all of these opin- 
ions, and repudiate them as unsound, unpatriotic, and libelous. Nor 
do we believe that the 8th of November election can be interpreted 



THE DEFEAT OF 1892. (335 

as meaning that a majority of the people indorse these convention 
declarations. The leaders of the Democratic party profess to believe 
them, but the majority of the people, I am sure, do not. Let those 
charged with the administration of public affairs, after the 4th of 
March, so interpret the victory, if they dare. 

Some of you may say you hope they will. I do not share in that 
sentiment. I hope they will not. It might be to the advantage of 
the Republican party, but it would be a serious and almost irrepa- 
rable injury to the country ; to every American interest except the 
sheriff and usurer it would be an unfortunate blow — to the wage- 
earner an almost irretrievable loss. For let it be remembered that 
when labor is once reduced in wage, it is hard, very hard, to advance 
it. This is the experience of the civilized world, and our own obser- 
vation teaches us that when industrial adjustments come wages are 
the first to fall and the last to rise. I do not seek to interpret the 
election of 1892. That devolves upon those who by the suffrages of 
the people are given the control of Congress and the executive 
power of the Government. Theirs is the responsibility and the peril. 
We can not interpret for them, nor would they accept our interpreta- 
tion if offered. For their interpretation they must answer to the peo- 
ple. The people may help them in that interpretation, and doubtless 
will, through the elections to be held before the assembling of Con- 
gress. These will be impressive lessons, and Ohio can be depended 
upon to emphasize its unwavering opposition to free trade and Brit- 
ish economic conditions. 

Mr. President, we do not hear so much about the repeal of this 
Republican tariff legislation as we did before and immediately follow- 
ing the election — although that is the promise of the Democratic 
platform ; and if they keep it, the law must go. Will they do it ? I 
answer, No ; they may affect to repeal it, but it will be a repeal only 
in name. I observe the programme now is a " revision of the tariff" 
— not in the usual and Constitutional way — but through the agency of 
the Cabinet of the President. That body, unknown to the Constitu- 
tion, with no legislative power, is to prepare a bill and the Congress 
is to accept and adopt it. The Constitution of the United States 
gives to the House of Representatives the sole power to originate 
tariff bills. The Senate can not do it. The President can not do it. 
No department of the Government save and except the House of 
Representatives has any such authority. Why ? Because the theory 
of the founders of the Government was that the taxing power should 
be kept as near the people as possible ; that the House of Representa- 
41 



636 SPEECHES AND ADDRESSES OF WILLIAM McKINLEY. 

tives, selected every two years, fresh from their constituents, could he 
more safely trusted in the interest of the people, with the origination 
of tax laws, than any other body. This wise provision is to be set 
aside, and the executive power of the Government is to usurp the 
power given by the Constitution to the people's representatives alone. 
No reason for this extraordinary course has been suggested except 
that the House of Representatives can not be trusted. While this 
may be true, it is an extraordinary proclamation of a Democratic 
President, made a year before its assembling — that he has no confi- 
dence in a Democratic House just elected by the people. With all 
this, however, we have nothing to do but to wait and observe, resolved 
in the mean time that our principles shall be fairly and fearlessly pre- 
sented to the people, and that there shall be no abatement of fidelity 
to our cause. 

What our political enemies may do is no measure of our duty. 
Whatever they may do or fail to do, our course is plain. Whether 
they keep faith or break it, let us keep ours unsullied and in honor. 
We must stand for Republican doctrines and for every one of them. 
The best our opponents can do will be bad enough ; little or much, it 
will unsettle business and force industrial changes. Even inaction 
will produce anxious suspense which will shake confidence. There 
are those who boldly assert that all fears are groundless ; that noth- 
ing will be done by this administration ; and in support of their 
confidence point to the fact that during Mr. Cleveland's first admin- 
istration business received no shock, but proceeded uninterruptedly. 
That is true for the most part, but it should be borne in mind that 
Hhe political conditions then are not the political conditions now. 
Then Mr. Cleveland and his party could do nothing, for a Republi- 
can Senate, undoubted in its majority, stood in their way. Not a 
new law of any public character was passed, and no law could pass, 
which did not have Republican sanction. That we had no disturb- 
ance of business was because during his entire four years Mr. Cleve- 
land administered the laws made by the Republican party, and no 
others, for no others could be enacted. His financial policy was that 
of the Republican party. He did what Grant and Hayes and Gar- 
field and Arthur and Sherman had pointed out as the path of safety, 
and which Republican legislation had made the only path of official 
duty. The tariff laws which he administered were protective in every 
feature. They were made by the Republican party in 1883 against 
united Democratic opposition, and the average rate of duty was 
hio-her under the act of 1883 than it is under the act of 1890. He 



THE DEFEAT OP 1893. 637 

did as to these great matters substantially what a Republican Presi- 
dent would have done. He could do nothing else. He administered 
the laws which embodied Re23ublican principles because ho and his 
party were stripped of all power to change them. That there oc- 
curred no serious disturbance to business was because the disturbers 
had their hands tied. That was our safety in the past. 

The junior Senator from Ohio, Mr. Brice, in his speech in this 
city on the 8th day of January last, said : 

No world is so quick as the business world to discount future dangers. At 
the faintest delicate scent of trouble the shock is received and carried to every 
branch of the business of the world. All our dangers from the revision of the 
tariff laws have already been endured. 

What consolation this contains : the business world has already 
discounted the revision of the tariff which is to be made by the 
Democratic party ! How can that be ? — when nobody knows what 
the revision will be. You may make preparation for something fixed 
and definite which is to transpire in the future, but you can not well 
discount a thing the character and extent of which you know noth- 
ing. It may be true — and doubtless is — as the Senator's language 
would indicate, that business is already feeling unfavorably the reflex 
action of the election of last fall ; that some enterprises, out of an 
abundance of caution, are running only on orders, and are diminish- 
ing their output, because buyers are purchasing more closely and in 
less volume than before. And it may be true that labor in some 
quarters is suffering in its earnings from this diminished production. 
However, what is yet to be " endured," if the proposed free-trade re- 
vision be accomplished, no man can tell, and certainly no business 
man can fully provide against. If the Senator had announced 
oflficially what the tariff revision was to be, if he knew, he would 
have rendered valuable service to his country, and the business world 
might have discounted, in part, future dangers. The Senator is a 
business man. And yet I venture to suggest that he does not know 
what the rate of duty in the proposed tariff will be upon a single 
article of the more than 2,000 now in the tariff schedules. He does 
not know what will be made free and what will be tariffed, what will 
be put on the free list and what will be taken from it. If he does, 
he is carrying a mighty fact which the business world would be glad 
to know, and which I am sure his associates in Congress would pay 
a premium to obtain. If he would tell, he would not only relieve the 
business world of painful suspense, but Mr. Cleveland and the Demo- 



638 SPEECHES AND ADDRESSES OF WILLIAM McKIXLEY. 

cratic leaders of painful embarrassment. If his *' delicate scent" 
has discovered what his party will do with the tariff he is the wisest 
of his brethren, and is large enough for two States like Ohio and 
New York. And his transcendent knowledge should entitle him to 
succeed the venerable Senator Morrill as Chairman of the Finance 
Committee of the Senate. It is comforting to be told by the Senator 
that the dangers from a revision of the tariff have already " been en- 
dured " ; that the suffering is over before the Democratic surgeons 
have applied their knives. I wish this rainbow view was real and 
that every interest in the country could see and realize it ; that labor 
could feel there was to be no loss in wages and no diminution of em- 
ployment. It will be accepted as real, let me assure the Senator, 
when it is demonstrated by actual experience that we can buy our 
goods abroad and still make them at home ; that foreign labor can be 
employed in foreign shops to make our goods and our home labor 
still have the same adequate employment and the same remunerative 

wages. 

As a party we have nothing to recall and little to regret. The 
past is secure and its glories can not be dimmed. The future will yet 
commend the latest Republican legislation and approve the present 
Republican administration. Republican purpose is written in public 
law. It can be read by all men. The country knows what it has ac- 
complished and is accomplishing. It does not rest in the breath of 
orators nor in the declaration of campaign platforms. It is an endur- 
ing statute. Criticism will no longer avail our political adversaries. 
Positive enactment must be met by positive enactment. Carping at 
our laws must give way to construction of theirs. A Democratic tariff 
law must now stand actual comparison with a Republican tariff law. 
That is the real test, and it must come, or the Democratic party must 
stand convicted by its own confession of obtaining power under false 
pretenses. We do not fear the contrast. Nay, we invite and welcome 
it. The business interests, the wageworker, the agriculturist of the 
country await with anxious solicitude the promised reforms. They 
should not be delayed. The Republican tariffs which have been so 
persistently characterized as artful devices to rob the poor should not 
be tolerated a single day after the Democracy takes power. Prompt 
action is the test of good f aitli and capacity ; procrastination is a sure 
proof of insincerity and infirmity. Which will it be? 

In a few days the country passes into the control of the Demo- 
cratic party, in a condition of matchless prosperity in every depart- 
ment of industry. We do not leave them a legacy of hard times, idle 



THE DEFEAT OF 1892. 639 

industries, unproductive enterprises and unemployed labor. "We turn 
over to them a country blessed with unprecedented activity in every 
avenue of human employment, with labor in active demand and better 
paid than in all our history before ; a Government with unparalleled 
resources and credit, and with no stain upon its honor. " The year 
1892," says Dun's Review of Trade, " has been the most prosperous 
ever known in business." This is the nonpartisan testimony of the 
triumph of the revenue and financial policies of the Republican party. 
This is the business indorsement of thirty years of Republican 
rule. This was a year, too, of " unconstitutional tariffs " and " sham 
reciprocity." This was the year, according to our adversaries, that 
the Republican policy was robbing the people. It was in this year, 
1892, while in the enjoyment of unexampled prosperity, that the Re- 
publican legislation which made this condition possible was, as the 
Democratic leaders would have us believe, repudiated by the people, 
and the Democratic policy of British free trade and wildcat money in- 
dorsed. I do not believe it. If they act upon that belief they will be 
promptly repudiated by the people. Not only has the year 1892 reg- 
istered an era of conspicuous progress and unexampled prosperity, 
but it witnessed a National administration under President Harrison 
unexcelled in honesty, power, and patriotism by any of its predeces- 
sors. Of this rich inheritance the Democratic party becomes the 
trustee for the people. It is my hope that it may suffer no loss or 
waste in their hands. I wish the country could be assured it would 
not. If it does, the trust will come back to us — and it will come back 
to us — with the doubly-renewed confidence of the people. We have 
but to hold fast, abating nothing of conviction and yielding nothing 
of our faith in the great doctrines which are destined to secure vic- 
tories as signal as any which have gone before. The party of Lincoln 
— whose anniversary we celebrate to-night — still lives. The party 
which rallied the young men of the country around the Banner of 
Liberty and Union, still carries it, with the glories you have added. 
Upon it are emblazoned the victories of the past and the great princi- 
ples which will win victories in the future — equal and impartial suf- 
frage, protection and reciprocity, honest money, and National honor. 



EUTHEKFOKD B. HAYES. 

Addeess befoee the Ohio "Wesleyan University at Dela- 
ware, Ohio, June 20, 1893. 

Mr. President, Members of the Board of Trustees, Mem- 
bers OF the Faculty, Ladies and Gentlemen : Rutherford 
Birchard Hayes, nineteenth President of the United States, born in 
this city on October 4, 1822, was a great and good man — great in all 
that was good ; good in all that was great. He was a fortunate man ; 
fortunate in his ancestry ; fortunate in his noble mother ; fortunate 
in all the influences of a Christian home ; fortunate in his early train- 
ing and higher education ; fortunate in the happiest of marriages ; 
fortunate in his professional experience, in his service as a volunteer 
soldier, in the uncertain paths of politics ; fortunate in every public 
and private relation. He was fortunate, and he deserved to be. He 
improved his opportunities; he accepted every responsibility as a sa- 
cred trust for which true account must be rendered. 

He received his earliest education in the Delaware public schools. 
From here he went to the Academy at Norwalk, Ohio, and later to 
the preparatory school at Middletown, Conn., to prepare for college. 
He entered Kenyon College at Gambler, Ohio, in the fall of 1838. 
He was a close student, one of the best debaters in the literary socie- 
ties of that college, and at his graduation was probably one of the 
most popular men of his class — that of 1842. He graduated at the 
head of his class and delivered a valedictory which even now is re- 
membered as one of the best of such productions. After leaving 
Kenyon, young Hayes studied law with Sparrow and Matthews at 
Columbus, and completed his professional studies at Harvard Law 
School in January, 1845. He entered the practice of his profes- 
sion in May, 1845, at Lower Sandusky, or what is now the city of 
Fremont, where he formed a partnership Avith General Ralph P. 
Buckland, an old friend, subsequently a gallant Union officer and 
member of Congress, and always a valuable and honored citizen of 




Pr ,;= V ' HB 3bI1 Ji. ITev/ ISiTc 




RUTHERFORD B. HAYES. 641 

his county and State. Desiring a wider field of professional activ- 
ity, Hayes located in Cincinnati in the winter of 1849-50. His life 
in that city he was always glad to recall as pleasant and profitable. 
One of its pleasures, that he alluded to most frequently, was his con- 
nection with the Literary Club, established thirty years before, and 
famous in after years for the large number of officers it furnished to 
the Union army. Here he was brought in contact with such states- 
men, jurists, and writers as Tom Corwin, Salmon P. Chase, Tom 
Ewing, the younger, Stanley Matthews, Judge George Hoadly, 
Murat Halstead, Moncure D. Conway, and Manning F. Force. On 
December 30, 1852, he married Miss Lucy Ware Webb, of Chillicothe, 
Ohio, whose beautiful character was an ever-present inspiration to 
him in all the subsequent years of his life. No one can tell the full 
influence this sweet woman had upon his future career, but we do 
know that she was the sunshine of his life, that in every trying mo- 
ment she was his strong support. 

In 1858 his public life commenced. He was appointed City So- 
licitor by the City Council of Cincinnati. The following spring he 
was elected at the polls by a majority of over 2,500 votes ; but in 1861 
he was defeated, as was the entire Republican ticket. Hayes, in pol- 
itics, had always been an ardent antislavery Whig and Republican. 
He loved liberty and hated oppression in every form. He supported 
Clay in 1844, Taylor in 1848, and Scott in 1852. He was among the 
thousands of youthful enthusiasts that rallied to the standard of 
Henry Clay, who was one of his chief ideals. It is said by a class- 
mate of Hayes that he heard him declare : " I would start in life 
without a penny, if by that Henry Clay could be elected President." 
Many an old man, too, would have been willing to make as great a 
sacrifice to have seen the great commoner elected Chief Executive of 
the Nation. In 1856, Hayes took a somewhat active part in the cam- 
paign for John C. Fremont, the " Great Pathfinder," whom it was 
his pleasure and privilege in later years to appoint Governor of Ari- 
zona. His biographers state that when in college he displayed an 
aversion to politics, and one of his classmates recalls a speech at that 
period in which Hayes declared that he wanted no political prefer- 
ment until after he was forty. " Give me the popularity that runs 
after" said he, " and not that which has to be sought for." This 
principle, although he was always an ambitious man, characterized 
his entire political career. What came to Hayes was not from his own 
seeking, but was the popular tribute to one who deserved it. He was 
notably active in the campaign of 1860. He was opposed to further 



642 SPEECHES AND ADDRESSES OF WILLIAM McKINLEY, 

concessions to the South and boldly said so, though such sentiments 
were not then in accord with public feeling. He then observed : 

Disunion and civil war are at hand, and yet I fear disunion and war less than 
compromise. We can recover from them. A distinguished Englishman told 
that Bonaparte was about to invade the country once said : " The danger of in- 
vasion is by no means equal to that of peace. A man may escape a pistol, how- 
ever near his head, but not a dose of poison." 

At a great Union meeting in Cincinnati, held immediately after 
the flag at Fort Sumter had been fired upon, he was made chairman 
of the committee on resolutions and voiced in fervent phrase the 
feelings of that patriotic city. On May 18, 1861, Hayes recorded 
in his daily journal the following patriotic purpose : 

Judge Matthews and I have agreed to go into the service for the war ; if pos- 
sible, into the same regiment. I spoke my feelings to him, which he said were 
his also — that this was a just and necessary war, and that it demanded the whole 
power of the country ; that I would prefer to go into it, if I knew I were to be 
killed in the course of it, rather than to live through and after it, without taking 
part in it, or having been part of it. 

On June 7, 18G1, he was commissioned by Governor Dennison as 
Major (with Stanley Matthews as Lieutenant Colonel) of the Twenty- 
third Ohio Volunteer Infantry, the original three-years' regiment 
from Ohio. There were many three-months' regiments which subse- 
quently enlisted for three years, but the Twenty-third, without any 
previous enlistment or experience, entered the service for three years. 
The first headquarters of the regiment were at Camp Chase. I had 
never seen Hayes until he reported to the regiment and I recall our first 
meeting the better because of a little incident which happened when, 
with all the pride of new recruits, we came to receive our muskets. 
The State could furnish only the most inferior guns. These we posi- 
tively and proudly refused to accept. We would accept nothing but 
the best. The officers spent most of the day in trying to persuade 
us to receive the guns for a few Aveeks, if only for the purpose of 
drill. None of us knew how to use any kind of a musket at that 
time, but we thought we knew our rights and we were all conscious 
of our importance. They assured us that more modern guns would 
soon be supplied. Major Hayes did the talking to our company, and 
I shall never forget the impression of his speech. He said that many 
of the most decisive battles of history had been won with the rudest 
weapons. At Lexington and Bunker Hill and many other engage- 
ments of the Eevolution our forefathers had triumphed over the well- 
equipped English armies with the very poorest firearms — and that 



RUTHERFORD B. HAYES. 643 

even pikes and scythes had done good work in that glorious conflict. 
Should we be less patriotic than our brave ancestors ? Should we 
hesitate at the very start of another struggle for liberty and union, 
for the best and freest Government on the face of the earth, because 
we were not pleased with the pattern of our muskets, or with the 
caliber of our rifles ? I can not, at this late day, recall his exact 
words, but I shall never forget his warmth of patriotic feeling and 
the sound sense with which he appealed to us. That was our first 
and last mutiny. We accepted the old-fashioned guns, took what 
was offered us cheerfully, and Hayes held us captive from that hour. 
From that very moment he had our respect and admiration, which 
never weakened but ever increased during the four eventful years 
that followed. 

I can not do more than touch upon his military services. He 
participated in all the early engagements in "West Virginia, under 
General Eosecrans. The first engagement was at Carnifex Ferry, on 
September 10, 1861, where Hayes commanded a detachment of four 
companies of his regiment. This was our first real fight, and the 
effect of the victory was of far more consequence to us than the 
battle itself. It gave us- confidence in ourselves and faith in our com- 
mander. We learned that we could fight and whip the rebels on their 
own ground. On October 24, 1861, Major Hayes was promoted to 
the rank of Lieutenant Colonel, taking the place of Stanley Mat- 
thews, who had been appointed Colonel of the Fifty-first Ohio, and 
James M. Comly, distinguished in later years as editor of the Ohio 
State Journal, became our Major. I will not stop to detail the ex- 
periences of our regiment in their winter quarters at Fayetteville, 
which we quitted in April ; of the advance upon Princeton and the 
evacuation of that little village by the rebels ; of our subsequent re- 
tirement to East Eiver; thence to Camp Piatt, on the Great Kanawha, 
making a march of one hundred miles in three days ; of our railroad 
ride from Parkersburg to Washington, where we joined the forces of 
General McClellan ; of our entrance into the city of Frederick, Mary- 
land, from which we drove the enemy, and thence on to the memor- 
able battle of South Mountain, in Avhicli Hayes was a conspicuous 
and commanding figure. 

It was a lovely September day — an ideal Sunday morning. 
McClellan's army, with Burnside's Corps in front, was passing up 
the mountain by the National road. General Cox's Ohio Division 
led Burnside's Corps, and the Twenty-third Ohio was in the lead of 
that division. Hayes was ordered to take one of the mountain 



Q4:4: SPEECHES AND ADDRESSES OF WILLIAM McKINLEY. 

paths and move to the right of the rebels. At nine o'clock the rebel 
picket was driven back, and on our pushing forward the rebels advanced 
upon us in strong force. Our regiment was quickly formed in the 
woods and charged over rocks and broken ground, through deep 
underbrush, under the heavy fire of the enemy at short range, and, 
after one of the hottest fights of the war, we drove them out of the 
woods and into an open field near the hilltop. Another charge was 
ordered by Hayes. No sooner had he given the word of command, 
than a minie ball from the enemy shattered his left arm above the 
elbow, crushing the bone to fragments. He called to a soldier to tie 
his handkerchief about the wound, but turning faint he fell, his men 
passing over and beyond him into the fight, whence he had ordered 
them. When he regained consciousness, Hayes found himself under 
a heavy fire, with the bullets pelting the ground all about him. 
He feared that his men were retreating, but he was soon reassured 
when, on calling out, he was carried in safety to friendly cover. 
Wounded and bleeding as he was, he was not wholly unconscious 
of what was going on about him, and ordered his men to hold 
their position, which they did under Major Comly, who, through the 
rest of the day, commanded the regiment with rare judgment and 
courage. The regiment made three successful charges in that fight, 
and lost nearly two hundred men — half of the effective force — in 
action. 

" The colors of the regiment were riddled," says Whitelaw Eeid, 
in Ohio in the War. " The blue field was almost completely carried 
away by shells and bullets." Hayes was brought to Ohio for medi- 
cal treatment, but returned to the field, even before his wound was 
healed. He was then commissioned Colonel of the Twenty-third 
Ohio, Colonel Scammon having been promoted to Brigadier General. 
In July, 1863, Colonel Hayes commanded two regiments and a sec- 
tion of artillery which were sent to check John IMorgan in his raid 
through the southern counties of Ohio. This movement was emi- 
nently successful, and aided in preventing the raiders from recrossing 
the river, and in compelling Morgan to surrender. Then the regi- 
ment, in the division commanded by General Crook, started on an 
expedition to cut the principal lines of communication between 
Richmond and the Southwest. It was a rough and trying march 
over mountains and through deep ravines and dense woods, with 
snows and rains that would have checked the advance of any but 
the most determined. Daily we were brought in contact with the 
enemy. We penetrated a country where guerillas Avere abundant 



RUTHERFORD B. HAYES. 645 

and where it was not an unusual thing for our men to be shot from 
the underbrush — murdered in cold blood. 

At Cloyd Mountain the regiment encountered the enemy, and 
there was a fierce and desperate engagement. Hayes distinguished 
himself by marked bravery at the head of his brigade in storming 
the works on the crest of the mountain. The advance across the 
meadow, in full sight of the enemy and in range of their guns, 
through the creek, and up over the works on the ridge was magnifi- 
cently executed, and the hand-to-hand combat in the fort was as 
desperate as any witnessed during the war. Still another charge was 
made and the rebels again driven back. On we hurried to Dublin 
Depot on the Virginia and Tennessee Railroad, burning the bridges 
there, tearing up the track, and rendering the railroad useless for the 
transportation of soldiers or supplies. Then the New Eiver Bridge 
was destroyed, and then, with frequent encounters, we went on to 
Staunton, Virginia. We entered Lexington, the seat of the Confed- 
erate Military Institute, after a sharp engagement, Hayes's brigade 
in the lead, and sustaining all the casualties which occurred. Then, 
on to Lynchburg, where, overcome by superior numbers, constantly 
augmented by fast arriving re-enforcements from Richmond, the 
whole division was compelled to retreat. Hayes showed wonderful 
pluck and determination in this severe expedition. All our com- 
missary supplies were consumed, and, almost without food, we 
marched and fought our way back, closely pursued by the enemy. 

"After we reached our supply train," to quote his own words, " we stopped and 
ate, marched and ate, camped about dark, and ate all night. We had marched 
almost continuously for about two months, fighting often, with little food and 
sleep, crossing three ranges of the Alleghenies four times, the ranges of the Blue 
Ridge twice, and marching several times all day and all night without sleeping." 

On July 18 th, Hayes was sent with his brigade to make an attack 
upon the rebels under Early ten miles beyond Harper's Ferry. 
Early's forces proved to be 30,000 in number. Hayes's brigade was 
surrounded, but with great coolness and daring he cut his way 
through and joined the main body of the troops under Crook. In this 
engagement Hayes was again wounded. His horse was shot under 
him, and he was struck in the shoulder by a spent ball. Notwith- 
standing his brigade was in the hottest of the fight it was yet in a 
condition to cover the retreat ; so splendid was its discii)linc that it 
constituted the rear guard for the next two days. 

The night battle of Berryville will not soon be forgotten. It was 
a brilliant scene ; the heavens were fairly illuminated by the flashes 



046 SPEECHES AND ADDRESSES OF WILLIAM McKINLEY. 

of our own and the enemy's guns. Here the rebels were repulsed 
with great loss. At the battle of Winchester, on September 19th, 
Hayes again displayed extraordinary bravery. Whitelaw Keid, in his 
account of this battle, gives the highest praise to Hayes, and those 
who saw and followed him know that it is not overdrawn. He says : 

Hayes's brigade had the extreme right of Crook's command in making a flank 
attack. In leading an assault upon a battery on an eminence, Colonel Hayes 
found a morass in his way over fifty yards wide. Being at the head of his brigade, 
as usual, he plunged in first, and his horse becoming mired at once, he dismount- 
ed and waded across alone under the enemy's fire. Waving his cap, he signaled 
his soldiers to come over, and when about forty had joined him, he rushed upon 
the battery and took it after a hand-to-hand fight with the gunners, the enemy 
having deemed the battery so secure that no infantry supports had been placed 
near it. Colonel Duvall, the division commander, was wounded and carried from 
the field in this fight, leaving Colonel Hayes in command. 

Thence after this engagement on to Fisher's Hill, one of the most 
brilliant of the many brilliant achievements of General George Crook, 
in which Hayes bore a noted part. It was a flank movement through 
the mountains and woods to the enemy's right. Never did troops 
advance with greater difficulty, on what appeared to be an impassable 
route, over the mountain side, where it seemed the foot of man had 
never trod. Hayes led the chai'ge down the gorge and up the hill. 
He led repeated charges — I can see him now encouraging his men to 
make another and still another charge — until we had captured the 
whole of the enemy's works and every piece of their artillery. Noth- 
ing was more brilliant or more decisive during the entire war, con- 
sidering the numbers in the allair, and Hayes's behavior was simply 
grand. 

Then came the terrible surprise at Cedar Creek, where Hayes dis- 
played such magnificent gallantry. Here, too, his horse was shot 
from under him. His horse fell, struck by a score of balls, and the 
rider was flung over its head, terribly bruised ; the ankle of his left 
foot caught in the stirrups and was dislocated. Hayes immediately 
mounted another horse, though suffering intensely, and, going back 
several miles, gathered a small force and aided in forming the line 
which Sheridan so inspired after his famous ride " from Winchester 
town, all the way to Cedar Creek." Hayes received great praise for 
his services in this battle. Both Crook and Sheridan assured him he 
Avould be a Brigadier General, and he was made one dating from that 
hour. Hayes was four times wounded, and had three horses shot 
from under him. General Grant, in his priceless Memoirs, pays him 
the following tribute : 



RUTHERFORD B, HAYES. 647 

On more than one occasion in these engagements General R. B. Hayes, who 
succeeded me as President of the United States, bore a very honorable part. His 
conduct on the field was marked by conspicuous gallantry, as well as the display 
of higher qualities than mere personal daring. This might well have been ex- 
pected of one who could write at the time he is said to have done so : " Any officer 
fit for duty who at this crisis would abandon his post to electioneer for a seat in 
Congress ought to be scalped." Having entered the army as a Major of Volun- 
teers at the beginning of the war, General Hayes attained, by meritorious service, 
the rank of Brevet Major General before its close. 

In December, 1865, he took his seat in Congress, to which he had 
been elected from the Second Ohio (Cincinnati) District at the pre- 
ceding Presidential election. He took no very active part in Con- 
gressional legislation or debate. lie was a quiet, faithful, hard- 
working member. He was renominated and re-elected to Congress 
in 1866. During his service in the House he courageously advocated 
the Fourteenth and Fifteenth Amendments to the Constitution and 
all the war measures of that period. In 1867 he was nominated for 
Governor and elected, defeating Allen G. Thurman. In 1869 he was 
renominated and re-elected, defeating George H. Pendleton, He re- 
tired to private life, but was again nominated in 1875, against his 
own expressed wish, and defeated "William Allen. His campaign in 
1875 was the most noted in which he was engaged. He led the fight 
for honest money. His speeches during that campaign were the ablest 
of his life, and if it was your good fortune to hear him in that great 
contest, I am sure you will join me in the opinion that no better or 
wiser or more statesmanlike speeches were ever made. Ohio was the 
National battle-ground. His victory for honest money and keeping 
inviolate the Nation's faith made him a commanding figure in Na- 
tional politics, to whom thousands hopefully turned as a future can- 
didate for President of the United States. Some one jocularly said, 
" He had hardly been elected Governor in 1875 before he began to 
be President in Ohio." To all prophetic suggestions concerning him- 
self he was in the habit of saying, " If the sky falls we shall all 
catch larks." To a friend he wrote : " It is not for you or me to en- 
roll ourselves in the great army of office-seekers. Let the currents 
alone." 

The Ohio Republican State Convention, divining the currents, in- 
structed our delegates to the National Convention at Cincinnati to vote 
for him, and General Noyes, in a speech of rare excellence, presented his 
name. Blaine, Morton, and Conkling were the commanding figures, 
while Hartranf t and Bristow were also before the Convention as can- 
didates. Hayes started with 61 votes, Blaine with 285. On the sev- 



648 SPEECHES AND ADDRESSES OF WILLIAM McKINLEY. 

entli ballot Hayes received 384 votes to 351 for Blaine and 21 for 
Conkling, and was declared the nominee. The Governor, quietly 
sitting in his office at Columbus, the calmest member of a little 
group of friends, had not believed such a result possible until after 
the sixth ballot was taken. He accepted it, as he accepted all pre- 
vious trusts, as a call to duty. The Governor's wife was visiting one 
of the State institutions — the Institution for the Education of the ' 
Blind, I believe — on an errand of mercy, when a messenger was sent 
" to bring her home instantly." She drove to her modest home, 
fearful of some dreadful accident or sudden sickness, " only to find," 
as she wrote to a friend, " that nothing was the matter, except her 
husband had been nominated for President." 

The campaign was not exciting, nor the enthusiasm of either 
party great. It was the Centennial year, and the people were more 
interested in the great Exposition than in politics. This afforded 
Mr. Tilden, with his splendid abilities as an organizer, an opportunity 
to marshal every force and influence against the majority party, and 
the result was a disputed Presidential election. The friends of Mr. 
Tilden in Congress suggested, and the supporters of President Hayes 
consented to, a submission of the dispute to the arbitrament of an 
Electoral Commission,* provided by a special law on the vexed sub- 
ject. This Commission, after a full hearing, decided that Hayes was 
duly elected, and he was inaugurated President on March 5, 1877, 
with as good and just a title to the office as that of George Wash- 
ington. He had a majority of the electoral votes upon the face of the 
returns. His title to the Presidency was confirmed by a Commission 
as distinguished as any that ever sat in judgment, created by the 
Forty-fourth Congress, one branch of which was Democratic. The 
finding of the Commission was then approved by Congress, and his 
right to rule determined by the only power having jurisdiction. 
This crisis in our history was a great strain upon popular govern- 

* This Commission was created by the act approved by President Grant on 
January 29, 1877, and was as follows : Five members of the Senate— George F. 
Edmunds, of Vermont ; Oliver P. Morton, of Indiana; Frederick T. Frelinghuy- 
sen, of New Jersey ; Allen G. Thurman, of Ohio ; and Thomas F. Bayard, of Dela- 
ware. Five members of the House of Representatives — James A. Garfield, of 
Ohio ; George F. Hoar, of Massachusetts ; Eppa Hunton, of Virginia ; Henry B. 
Payne, of Ohio ; and" Josiah G. Abbott, of Massachusetts ; and five Justices of the 
United States Supreme Court — Nathan Clifford, of Maine ; Stephen J. Field, of 
California ; Samuel F. Miller, of Iowa ; William Strong, of Pennsylvania ; and 
Joseph P. Bradley, of New Jersey. 



RUTHERFORD B. HAYES. 649 

ment, and its peaceful settlement a great tribute to the intelligence 
and virtue of the people. 

The administration of President Hayes answered the highest test 
to which it could be subjected. It was satisfactory and successful ; it 
was clean, conscientious, wise, and patriotic. During it preparation 
for the resumption of specie payments was made with such care and 
wisdom that when the appointed day came there was no shock or dis- 
turbance to business ; it came almost unobserved, bringing security 
and courage to the business world. This was wholly accomplished in 
less than two years after Hayes was inaugurated, and as the result of 
the work of his administration, and his administration alone. The 
public debt was also funded at lower rates of interest and the country 
entered upon an era of unexampled prosperity. His determination 
and firmness in resisting unwarrantable interference by Congress 
with the executive power of tlie Government displayed his accus- 
tomed bravery. "With both branches of Congress a part of the time 
against him, he nevertheless compelled it, by the weight of public 
opinion, to accept his position on many of the most important bills. 
He maintained in full vigor the constitutional prerogatives of the 
President. As to his position on the Southern question and his 
attempted reforms in the civil service, there will always be hon- 
est differences of opinion. In his veto of the anti-Chinese bill he 
displayed great moral courage. His special message of March 8, 
1880, on the interoceanic canal also merits warm commendation 
and the policy thus outlined has since been adopted by Congress 
and sustained by three successive administrations. His benevolence 
and piety dictated his Indian policy, and under no other administra- 
tion in American history was so much good done for these unfortu- 
nate people. His administration began under the most unfavorable 
auspices, for, aside from the threatening and troublesome political 
complications, business stagnation and severe distress had prevailed 
throughout the country, resulting from the great panic of 1873. 
His conduct of public affairs made Republican success possible in 
1880, fully restored and strengthened the confidence of the peo- 
ple in that party in the Northern States, and won for him the genu- 
ine respect and good will of the wisest and best men of all parties. 
His lofty purpose was never questioned — his purity of personal 
and official life were everywhere accepted. His death discloses this 
even more clearly than did his retirement from public office. His 
bitterest enemy can find no flaw in his character, no defective link in 
the chain of his life. He expressed a noble sentiment, one that fitly 



650 SPEECHES AND ADDRESSES OF WILLIAM McKINLEY. 

characterized his own conduct, when he declared : " He serves his 
party best who serves his country best." 

At the expiration of his term, Mr. Hayes sought the peaceful 
quiet and retirement of his old home at Fremont. He was then and 
subsequently the recipient of many honorable distinctions. Kenyon, 
Harvard, Yale, and Johns Hopkins Universities conferred upon him 
the degree of LL. D. He was elected Commander-in-Chief of the 
Loyal Legion of the United States, and at his death held that office. 
He was also elected Commander of the Ohio Commandery of that 
patriotic order, the first President of the Society of the Army of 
"West Virginia, and President of the Twenty- third Eegiment Ohio 
Volunteers' Association. His time was almost entirely devoted 
to benevolent enterprises. He was President of the Board of Trus- 
tees of the John Slater Educational Fund ; President of the National 
Prison Eeform Association; an active member of the National Con- 
ference of Correction and Charities ; a trustee of the Ohio State 
University at Columbus ; a trustee of Kenyon College at Gambler ; a 
trustee of the "Western Eeserve University at Cleveland, of the 
"Wesleyan University here at Delaware, of Mount Union College at 
Alliance, and of various other charitable and educational institutions. 
You can attest his usefulness in college work, you know and ap- 
preciate his fidelity and his worth ; but who can tell the noble work 
done by this pure and enlightened man among the friendless inmates 
of asylums, almshouses, and prisons ? God alone knows how many 
he lifted up to a higher and better life. He had a heart large enough 
to feel for all sufferers, and a disposition that prompted him to 
constant and generous effort in behalf of the depraved and unfor- 
tunate. 

No ex-President ever passed the period of his retirement from 
the Executive chair to the grave with more dignity, self-respect, or 
public usefulness. None met him but to admire the head and 
heart of the man, and to marvel how he could have been so much 
misjudged and so often belittled, berated, and maligned. His old 
army comrades knew the stuff of which he was made ; knew that his 
every aspiration was manly; knew that every fiber of his nature was 
true and steady. His old friends and neighbors at Fremont under- 
stood him and appreciated his genuine worth, the simplicity and no- 
bility of his character, better perhaps than any others. Your Board of 
Trustees and Faculty knew his strength, and had occasion to observe 
his unselfish devotion to the cause of greater enlightenment and 
higher education. General Hayes never spoke ill of any one, nor 



RUTHERFORD B. HAYES. g51 

slightingly, of friend or foe. He was a serious, earnest man, never a 
trifler. There was something in his life that reminds me of those 
lines of his favorite poem, Tom Taylor's tribute to Lincoln in Lon- 
don Punch: 

He went about his work, — such work as few 

Ever had laid on head and heart and hand,— 
As one who knows, where there's a task to do, 

Man's honest will must Heaven's good grace command; 
Who trusts the strength will with the burden grow, 

That God makes instruments to work his will, 
If but that will we can arrive to know, 

Nor tamper with the weights of good and ill. 

It is too soon, perhaps, to form a just estimate of his character. 
He moved so quietly in our midst, so unostentatiously, and so entirely 
without assertion of rank or excellence. He was so at home with all 
classes and conditions of men that we failed to observe how superior 
he was in many of the qualities that go to make a great character. 
He was diligent in whatever he undertook, fervent in purpose, with 
an abiding faith in the people, and a trustful confidence in God. 
We could not appreciate .while he was with us how pure, how gentle, 
how true, how wise, how noble, how unselfish he was. His simplicity 
of manner, his purity and truth, his absolute freedom from pretense, 
veiled his excellences to the common mind. All felt that he was one 
of us, our brother, our friend, our comrade, our delightful and genial 
associate, whose presence was an inspiration, and whose companion- 
ship was beneficent and uplifting. Yet in the short time we have 
had in which to sum up the elements of his character, we are sur- 
prised at their strength, their virility, their exalted quality. Some of 
us may have partly appreciated them, or thought we did ; death 
alone reveals them in their perfection and grandeur. Compare him 
with his contemporaries. They lived during a period favorable for 
the development of the highest qualities of manhood, of soldiership, 
of statesmanship, of philanthropy. Call the long and honorable roll ; 
others were perhaps his superiors in intellect, some were more bril- 
liant, but, measured by the success achieved, measured by the work 
he wrought, none have surpassed him. He kept pace with the best 
in the race for usefulness and eminence. He was always advancing, 
never receding from any position that he won : 

His steps were slow, yet forward still 

He pressed where others paused or failed ; 

The calm star clomb with constant will, — 

The restless meteor flashed and paled 1 
42 



652 SPEECHES AND ADDRESSES OF WILLIAM McKINLEY. 

Wherein lies the secret of this remarkable career ? "We must seek 
for it first in his early education. He was born to half- orphanage, 
his father having died before his birth. To the fact that he was so 
bereft, he himself attributed a certain childish and youthful inde- 
pendence. True, he was adopted by his Uncle Birchard, but he was 
the solace of his mother, the man of the family. He had a good 
mother, a woman of strong character, who early instilled into his 
childish heart lessons of wisdom and virtue so strong that they in- 
fluenced his whole life and kept him clean. While not so brilliant as 
some of his associates at college, he kept his course steadily, studied 
faithfully, always had his lessons well prepared, and at the end gradu- 
ated at the head of his class. He had also done this at the prepara- 
tory school. AVe find him entering upon active life with good health, 
good education, good habits, and good morals — man's best armor. 
These, with a good intellect, a brave heart, and a fair opportunity, 
were a combination which was irresistible, and fairly interpret his suc- 
cess. The opportunity, too, came to Hayes, and he entered its open 
door ready for duty and responsibility. At the bar, and as a soldier, 
he simply did his duty, but he did it well. As a member of Congress 
he was not prominent, but his record discloses no unwise vote or 
speech. As Governor of our State his administration was marked by 
but few unusual events, and yet some things were done that had long 
remained undone, and this brings me to a trait in his character which 
is most marked, and to which may, in good part, be attributed the 
success of his career. 

He was the very Genius of Common Sense. He was level-headed. 
He was with the people, never above the people. He brought every 
question to the test of plain every-day thought and experience. His 
mind was luminous with practical foresight. He saw men and things 
in their true relation, with almost prophetic instinct. Seeing so 
clearly what was best, he had the moral courage to decide for the right 
and trust " the safe appeal of Truth to Time." He was not indiffer- 
ent to little things, not too much engrossed to attend to what ought 
to be done, even if it was no great undertaking. His whole life was 
crowded with little acts and deeds of love and kindness, of care and 
attention, of constant alleviation of pain and suffering and of want 
and misery. Ever the friend of education, he gave efficient service 
for years to that noble cause. 

He found, as Governor, that the provisions of the important law 
passed by Congress in 1862, and familiarly known as the " Land 
Grant Act," upon which the Ohio State University and other similar 



RUTHERFORD B. HAYES. 653 

institutions were founded, were not being complied with. The act 
had been accepted by the Legislature of Ohio, the land scrip had 
been sold, and the proceeds deposited in the State Treasury. Three 
Governors had preceded him since that time. Three State adminis- 
trations, in the sore troubles of war and reconstruction, had failed to 
establish the college it had guaranteed the National Government 
should be established for manual and scientific training. Governor 
Hayes set himself to the accomplishment of this work, secured the 
necessary legislation, and appointed the Board of Trustees that 
located and established the University on broad and enduring foun- 
dations. It is no disparagement to the able men who composed this 
board, one of whom was your lamented townsman, Judge Thomas 
C. Jones, to say that when the full history of this achievement is 
written it will be found that behind and directing the forces which 
wrought this result was the plain, common, earnest, and practical 
Governor who appointed them. 

His success may partly be attributed to his manner of life, which 
was always plain, simple, and free from excess. He used neither in- 
toxicants nor tobacco. He had at all times all his faculties at his 
command, and at the ripe age of threescore and ten " his eye was not 
dimmed, nor his natural strength abated." He never used glasses. 
The last time I saw him alive I could not but comment on his 
elasticity and vigor, and congratulate him, as I did, that his prospects 
for prolonged and lengthened years were apparently so excellent. He 
was of an unusually bright and sunny nature; with his zeal and 
activity he made his merit known, and forced the respect and admira- 
tion of his fellows. Step by step he rose to the highest eminence man 
can attain. That he might not be tempted to use the powers of the 
great office to promote his personal ambition, he renounced all thought 
of a second term of the Presidency, which many of his illustrious pre- 
decessors had held or sought to hold, and became again a plain, sim- 
ple, unpretending citizen, unsoured by ambition and unspoiled by 
power. He had borne himself bravely and well in a most trying 
period, and enrolled his name among the heroes of time. The in- 
fluence of his example, the excellence of his work, the nobleness of his 
character, may well be treasured by all who appreciate the highest 
ideal of citizenship and the best type of American statesmen. 

General Hayes never deserted his colors, never compromised his 
convictions. Duty with him was masterful, and wherever it led he 
followed. In one of the engagements of the war he got in advance 
of the main line of the army with a part of his regiment and the 



654 SPEECHES AND ADDRESSES OF WILLIAM McKINLEY. 

regimental colors, and was moving to the front, apparently uncon- 
scious that he was doing more than his simple duty, when an officer 
superior in rank to him called out from the main body of the troops, 
" Bring those colors back to the line 1 " Hayes answered with the 
swiftness of a minie ball, " Bring the line up to the colors ! " And 
without other orders, inspired by the confident tone of the subordinate 
ofificer, the line pushed forward to the colors, with a cheer, charged 
the enemy, and drove him from his stronghold. 

He participated in the Grand Eeview which took place at the 
close of the war at the Capital of the Nation, and marched with the 
survivors of the grandest army of free men that ever assembled, 
after they had just won a complete triumph in as grand a cause as 
ever engaged mankind. Last year the survivors of that glorious army 
again assembled in the Capital City, and Hayes was again with them. 
He had filled, since his last march, twenty-seven years before, the 
most illustrious position in human affairs — had been President of sixty 
millions of free people, the Commander in Chief of the Army and 
Navy of the United States. But on that hot summer day Hayes was 
again with his old comrades, not in chariot or tandem, not mounted on 
prancing steed. He was in the ranks, marching on foot through the 
dusty streets at the head of his old regiment, the Twenty-third Ohio, 
which he loved, and which loved him with undying devotion. This 
was the post of comradeship and honor he coveted most of all the 
honors so freely extended to him, and well illustrates the simple and 
sincere nature of the man, and the simplicity and equality of true 
American manhood. 

No retrospect of the career of Hayes would be complete that 
omits reference to his beautiful Christian character. He had a gen- 
uine reverence for religion and a trustful reliance upon Divine Provi- 
dence. He believed in the Church, its mission, and its ministrations. 
He was a regular attendant upon its services, delighted in its work, 
shared in its labors, and generously contributed to its support. 
Statesman, soldier, scholar — he was all these, and greater in all these 
because he was a true Christian gentleman who " feared God and 
walked uprightly." Abused and vilified, misunderstood and misin- 
terpreted, he preserved his sunny face and kept his steady head, work- 
ing faithfully on until death for his country and his countrymen, be- 
cause he loved them both. He lived long enough to see a reversion 
of popular sentiment in his own favor, and died with the confidence 
and affection of all his countrymen. Posterity can be trusted to give 
him his rightful place in history, and a proud one it will be. 



INDEX. 



^^ 



Abbott, Josiah G., 648. 

Abolition tax on State Banks. Discussion of, 

610-615. 
Acts of Congress. Duties of Supervisors of 
Elections, 34, 35, 37 ; March 3, 1881, pur- 
chase of bonds, 203, 263. 
Adams, John, 247, 432. 
Adams, John J., 162. 
Adams, John Quincy, 214, 248. 
Address at Canal Dover, Ohio, 215. 
Youngstown, Ohio, 220, 606. 
Canton, Ohio, 242, 515. 
Boston, 250. 
Atlanta, 337. 
New York, 358, 507. 
Philadelphia, 483. 
Cincinnati, 558. 
Columbus, 564, 633. 
Cleveland, 571. 
Ann Arbor, Mich., 574. 
Lakeside, Ohio, 583. 
Beatrice, Neb., 589. 
Administration. The Cleveland, 225-241. 
Ad valorem duties. Encourage frauds and 
undervaluations, 278 ; dithcult to fix, 299 ; 
free traders troubled about, 419, 420. 
Agricultural College law, 465. 
Agricultural products. American and for- 
eign compared, 244; imports in 1887, 311 ; 
imports in 1859 and 1889, 407. 
Agriculture. Promoted by protection, 6 ; 
"golden era" of, 81; increase in United 
States, 95 ; manufactures interdependent, 
152; foundation of all industries, 242; 
scientific knowledge essential to, 243 ; 
condition of, 406. 
Agriculturist. Benefited by protection, 306 ; 

value of home market to, 307. 
Aiken. D. Wyatt. On greed of manufactur- 
ers, 102; cotton ties, 110. 
Alabama. Population and vote, 169. 
Allen, John M., 457. 
Allen, William, 568. 
Allison, William B., 596. 
Aluminum. Duty on, 476. 
Amalgamated Iron and Steel Association, 

155. 
Ambler, Jacob A., 108. 
Amendments to the Federal Constitution, 

167. 
Ammen, Daniel, 360. 



American Iron and Steel Association. Ke- 
port on wages, 17. 

American manhood. " Higher type " of, 
261. 

American market. For the American pro- 
ducer, 257. 

American Press. Extracts from Wayne 
County Democrat, 25; Stark County 
Democrat, 28; Cincinnati Enquirer, 32; 
The Federalist, 48; Okolona States, 53; 
Chicago Times, 68 ; Atlanta Constitution, 
103 ; Macon Telegraph and Messenger, 
103; New York Tribune, 119; Boston 
Commercial Bulletin, 281 ; New York 
Herald, 328 ; Chicago Tribune, 425 ; New 
York Evening Post, 512 ; North American 
Keview, 588, 619 ; Forum, 597 ; Boston 
Herald, 597, 625. 

American workingman, The, 558-561. 

Andersonville. Dying soldier at, 519. 

Anti-Lottery bill, 465. 

Anti- Option bill, 465. 

Anti-Trust bill, 465. — p< 

Anvils. Duty on, 475. 

Appleton, Nathan. Price list of, 99. 

Appomattox. Its settlements embodied in 
Constitution, 182, 229. 

Apportionment. Of Kepresentatives to Con- 
gress, 167. 

Appropriations. Coercive riders on, con- 
demned, 45. 

Arnold, Matthew, 561. 

Arrin^ton, Louis, 316. 

Arthur, Chester A., 193, 261. 

Asia. Wheat product of, 406. 

Atkins, J. D. C. On Army appropriation 
bill, 45. J' ll' I' 

Atkinson, Edward. On American work- 
men, 495 ; on wages of labor, 597, 598. 

Austin, Benjamin. Letter of Jefferson to, 
490. 

Australia. Tin product of, 283. 

Austro-Hungary, 304. 

Balance of Trade. Under protection and v 
free trade, 422. 

Ballot. Crimes against the, 55-61. 

Ballot, The. Frauds in the South, 167 ; con- 
test for, 173, 380. 

Bankruptcy bill, 464. 

Banks. Deposits in favorite. 269. 



iX. 



^ 



656 



INDEX. 



Barbour, William. Letter of, 315. 

Bayard, James A. On riders to appropria- 
tions, 45. 

Bayard, Thomas F., 266, 3T8, 648. 

Bayne, Thomas M., 77, 405. 

Beck, James B. On Army appropriation 
bill, 44; on Democratic appropriations in 
1886, 239. 

Belgium, 304. 

Bell, Isaac Southerin. Keport on iron in- 
Nv terests, 16. 

^ Bigelow, Prof. On foreign trade, 12. 

Binding Twine. Duty on, 479. 

Bingham, John A., 568. 

Bisby, Horatio, Jr. Contest against, 57. 

Bismarck, Prince, 123 ; eulogy on protection, 
304. 

Blackburn, Joseph C. S. Quorum, how con- 
stituted, 390, 391. 

Blaine, James G. Mentioned for President, 
61 ; vote wickedly suppressed, 168 ; ma- 
jority of electoral vote for, 169; Paris let- 
ter in 1888, 256 ; reciprocity arrangements, 
408; treaty with Brazil, 511 ; no dictation 
permitted, 515. 

Blair P]ducational bill. House refused to 
consider, 235; appropriations proposed 
under, 237. 

Blankets. Cost of, prices of, duty on, 321- 
325. 

Boards of Election, 379. 

Boiler and Plate Iron, 473. 

Borax. On free list by Mills bill, 282. 

Botelor, Alexander R., 108. 

Bounty. On sugar, 452. 

Bowen, Henry C. Noble sentiment of, 533. 

Boynton, W. W., 567. 

Bradley, Joseph P., 648. 

Bragg, Edward S., 212. 

Breckinridge, Clifton R., 502, 503. 

Breckinridge, W. C. P., 196, 298, 334, 387, 
. 452, 504. 

> Brice, Calvin S. On disturbance to busi- 
ness, 637. 

Bright, John, 528. 

Bristow, Benjamin H., 647. 

British Honduras. Trade with, 350. 

Bronze. Importation of, 285. 

Brough, John, 378, 566. 

Brush, Charles, Jr., 567. 

Bryce, James. Quotation from, 586. 

Buchanan, James. Messages of 1857 and 
1858 on state of Union, 84. 

Bureau of Industry. Establishment of, 177. 

Burnet, Jacob, 567. 
^ Burr, Aaron, 565. 
'^> Business. Peril to, how relieved, 286. 

Butterworth, Benjamin, 69. 

Byuum, William D., 296, 445. 

Cabinet. Revision of tariff, proposed by, 

635. 
Cairnes, John E. America's position on the 

tariff, 80. 
Calhoun, John C, 432, 528. 
Campbell, James, 316. 
Campbell, James E., 532, 542, 547, 548. 
Canada. Adopts protective system, 92. 
Cannon, Joseph G., 390. 



Carlisle, John G., 36 ; on " golden era," 81 ; 
on cotton ties, 110; compliment from Eng- 
lish friends, 149 ; election as Speaker pre- 
dicted, 229 ; on constitutional quorum, 381, 
383, 385, 387 ; on special Senate Committee, 
596. 

Carpets. Product of, 418. , 

Casey, Joseph. On distress of manufac- ^ 
turers, 82. 

Cass, Lewis. On riders to appropriations, 
47 ; minister to France, 513. 

Cast Steel. Cheapened by protection, 98. 

Caswell, Lucien B., 500. 

Cement. Duty on, 417. 

Central America. Trade with, 350. 

Cereal Products. Contrast under protection i/ 
and free trade, 90 ; comparative produc- 
tion of, 345. 

Certificates of Election. Prima facie right 
to office, 62. 

Chace, Jonathan. On cotton ties, 110. 

Chalmers, James R. On elections, 49. 

Chamber of Commerce of Lincolnshire. 
Resolution of, 330. 

Chandler, Zachariah, 273. 

Charlton, Hon. Mr. On Canadian trade, 
408. 

ChasCj Salmon P., 369, 432, 567. 

Chemicals. Tariff on, 471. 

Chicago. Retail prices in, 596. -^ 

Chicago Convention. Vote on free-trade -i 
platform, 592. 

Choate, Rufus, 258. 

Cincinnati. Election of 1878, 40. 

Circulation. Per capita, 544. ^ 

Civil-Service Reform, 395, 396. 

Civil-Service Reform. Ohio Republicans -^ 
favor, 240. 

Civil War. Its settlements irreversible, 171, 
365 ; losses of, 362, 518 ; purposes of, 364. 

Clardy, M. L., 321. 

Clay, Henry. On change of tariff policy, 
14 ; grounds for advocating protection, 
189; at Ashland, 247; opposed to ad va- 
lorem duties, 299 ; happy transformation, 
508. 

Clayton, John M. On riders to appropria- 
tions, 45. 

Cleveland, Mr. A Reply to, 487-497. 

Cleveland, Grover. Southern majorities in 
1884,169; attitude on civil-service reform, A 
173 ; financial policy, 208 ; letter to Secre- 
tary Manning, 210 ; dependent pension 
bill vetoed by, 212; eftbrts for free trade, 
229 ; speech* at Paterson, 231 ; illogical A 
attacks on protection, 258 ; repudiates 
public law, 268 ; favors foreign manufac- 
turers, 325; on cheapness, 448; direct tax 
bill vetoed by, 498; opposed to coining 
silver, 541; as "calamity howler," 596; -^ 
.speech in Rhode Island, 599. 

Cleveland, Ohio. Campaign speech at, 368 ; 
illegal voting in, 379. 

Clifford, Nathan, 648. 

Clothing. Ready-made, under Mills bill, 
282; cost of, 319. 

Cobb, James E., 504, 505. 

Cobb, Thomas R., 266. 

Cobden, Richard, 528. 



INDEX. 



657 



Codman, John. On prices of labor, 18. 

Coffee. Importation of, in 18V7, 343. 

Cofley, John, 316. 

Coinage. — Silver. Suspended in 1805 by- 
Jefferson, 454. 

Coleman, Dr. Letter of Jackson to, 13. 

Coleman, H. Dudley, 503. 

Coleman, Peter, 41. 

Columbus, Christopher. Letter of, 631. 

Comly, James M., 643. 

Commerce. Marvelous growth of United 
States, 94 ; contrast with foreign, 304. 

Commission, The Tariff, 70-105. 

Commission, Tariff. Demanded by business 
men, 72; opposed by Democracy, 73. 

Committee Meetings, 445-446. 

Common Carriers. Settlement of differences 
of, 196. 

Competition, Domestic. Eegulates prices, 
372. 

Compound Lard Bill, 465. 

Compton, Barnes, 390. 

Conference Committee's Keport, 471-481. 

Conger, Omar D. Keport of, 72. 

Congress, The Fifty first, 459-468. 

Congress of the United States. Second law 
established protection, 14 ; appropriations 
by Forty-fourth and Forty-fifth, 31 ; rep- 
resentation in Forty-ninth, 167; resolu- 
tion declaring purposes of rebellion, 64; 
rules of Fifty-first, 462 ; Fifty -second, 
plan of tariff revision, 577. 

Congressional GeiTymandering, 23-32. 

Congressional Gerrymandering. Evils of, 
23 ; condemned by all fair men, 460 ; re- 
peal demanded, 523. 

Conspiracy. The Maine, 56. 

Constitution of the United States. Extracts 
from. Article 14, sections 2, 167, 171. 

Consumer, American. Always pays duty 
under revenue tariff, 343 ; never under 
protective duties, 372; life easier under 
new tariff, 599. 

Conkling, John, 316. 

Conkling, Koscoe, 273. 

Converse, George L., 549. 

Convict Labor. Manufactures of, prohibited, 
400. 

Conway, Moncure D., 641. 

Cook, Philip, 111. 

Cooper and Hewitt. On iron trade in 1849, 
1882. 

Corning, Erastus, 108. 

Cotton Ties. Duty on, 101, 109 ; free under 
Mills bill, hoop iron taxed, 296. 

Cowlcs, John P., 573. 

Cox, Jacob D., 573. 

Cox, Samuel S. For " British Cobden free 

trade," 593. 
Crain, William IL, 386, 387. 
Crapo, William W., 111. 
Crisp, Charles F., 381, 382, 390, 394. 
Crocker, George G. " Quorum present, vote 

valid," 392. 
Crockery. Cost of, 113. 
Crook, Georse, 644. 

Culbertson, David B. On direct tax, 499. 
Cummings, Amos J. Letters to N. Y. Sun 
on Dakota tin mines, 415. 



Currency. Best in the world, 613. 
Curtis, George William. Picture of a Puri- 
tan, 482. 
Cushing's Digest. Extracts from, 383, 384. 
Customs Administrative Bill, 464. 
Customers. Americans the best, 603. 
Cutler, William P., 631. 

Dairy Products in 1880, 245. 

Dakota. Tin mines of, 283, 415. 

Dahlgren, John A., 360. 

Dallas, George M., 378. 

Dalzell, .John, 381. 

Dana, Charles A., 560. 

Davies. J. C. Arbitration before, 7. 

Davis, Henry Winter, 273. 

Dawes, Henry L., 261. 

Dayton, Ohio. Campaign speech at, 225. 

Declaration of Independence. E.xpediency 
doubted, 363. 

Dedication of the Ohio Building, 630-632. 

Defeat of 1892, 633-639. 

Delano, Columbus, 568. 

Democratic National Conventions of 1856 
and 1860, 49 ; of 1892, 590. 

Democratic Convention. Ohio, of 1870, 
236. 

Democratic resolutions. Favoring restora- 
tion wool duty of 1867, 549 ; on tariff of 
1892, 590. 

Dennison, William, 378, 566. 

Dependent Pension Bill. Veto of, 212-214. 

Dependent Pension Bill. Questions in- 
volved, 212 ; bill warranted by duty and 
situation, 213. 

Depew, Chauncey M. On American liberty, 
535. 

Deputy Marshals. Duties of, 37 ; appointed 
in cities only, 39. 

Dillon, William J., 316. 

Direct Tax. Refunding Bill, 498-501. 

Direct Tax. Tabular statement of, 500. 

Discriminations. In Wood Bill, 21. 

Dodge, J. R. Letters from, 316, 406. 

Domain, The Public. (See Public Lands.) 

Douglas, Stephen A. On riders to appro- 
priations, 47, 432. 

Drawbacks. On imports for foreign trade, ^ 
349, 401. 

Dubuque, Iowa. Retail prices in, 596. 

Duties. On pottery, 10 ; easy to reduce, 
107 ; personal effects in foreign travel, 
399. 

Dunn, Poindoxter. On wheat producers of 
Northwest and India, 309. 

Dun's Review of Trade. On business of ^ 
country, 639. 

Dupont, Samuel F., 360. 

Earthenware. Duties on, 10, 325. 

Eaton, William H., 74, 142. 

Economv. False showing of, 239. "^ 

Edison, Thom.as A., 567. 

Edmunds, George F., 273. 

Kells, Daniel P., 571. 

Eight-Hour Law, The, 469-470. -^ 

Election Supervisoi-s. Duties of, 35 ; their 
appointment constitutioiuil, 36; arrests 
without process, 38 ; law, how passed, 43. 



658 



INDEX. 



Electoral College. Southern Republicans 
denied expression in, 168. 

Ellsmore, Mr. Testimony of, 8. 

Enjrland. Her policy in trade, 92 ; system 
of duties, 340; only free-trade country, 
580. 

English Press. Extracts from : Iron and 
Coal Trades Review, 147; Machinery 
Market, 148 ; London Spectator, 149 ; Pall 
Mall Gazette, 149 ; Pottery Gazette, 117, 
325, 329; London Post, 304; London 
Ironmonger, 399, 413 ; London Iron and 
Steel Trades Journal, 413, 414 ; Nineteenth 
Century, 494 : London Times, 555 ; Shef- 
field Dailjr Telegram, 556; Vanity Fair, 
556 ; English Standard, 556 ; Leeds Week- 
ly, 556 ; "Western Morning News, 556 ; 
Manchester Examiner, 556; Fair Play, 
604 ; London Punch, 051. 

Equal Suffrage, 165-180. 

Erie Railroacl. Tonnage of, 426. 

Evans, Ro^er, 313. 

Ewmg, Thomas, Jr. On Federal election 
laws, 59. 

Ewing, Thomas, Sr. On protection, 145, 5G7. 

Exports. Exceed imports under protection, 
421. 

Exposition. International Electrical, at 
Paris, 559. 

Fairchilds, Charles S., On balance in Treas- 
ury, 211 ; purchase of bonds, 205; effect of 
increased duties, 402. 

Fall River, Mass. Retail prices in, 596. 

Farmer, The American, 242-249. 

Farmers, American. Character and position 
of, 247 ; small farms preferable, 247. 

Farmers. Favor increase of duties on wool, 
158 ; denied a hearing, 278 ; discriminated 
against, 296 ; beneficiaries of protection, 
352 ; comparative cost of labor, 406 ; duties 
for protection of, 528 ; needs of, 631 ; no 
class so benefited by protection, 602 ; con- 
dition in England, '603. 

Farming. Most honorable of occupations, 
246. 

Farragut, David G., 300. 

Federal Supervisors. (See Election Su- 
pervisors.) 

Field, Stephen J., 648. 

Filibustering in Congress, 387. 

Fillmore, Millard. Messages in 1851 and 1852 
on state of Union, 83. 

Flax. Manufactures of, 477. 

Florida. Frauds at elections in, 57. 

Folger, Charles J. Report of 1883, 205, 205. 

Follett. John F., 103. 

Foote, Andrew H., 360. .^ 

Foraker, Joseph B., 160, 223, 240, 378, 532. 

" Force Bill," 462. 

Force, Manning F., 041. 

Foreign Producers. -No. right to equality, 
294. 

Foreign Trade. Free nigterials for the, 450, 
451. 

Foreign Trade. In 1878, imports and exports, 
12; under revenue and protection tariffs, 
374; imports and exports, 1870 to 1888, 
423, 424; of year ending June 30, 1891, 



550 ; exports trebled, imports doubled, 601 ; 
in 1892, 621. 

Fort, Greenberry L. Re.solution of, 28. 

Foster, Charles. Action as Governor, 68 ; 
letter to, 69, 532. 

France. Commerce of, 304 ; wheat product 
of, 406 ; public debt per capita, 428. 

Franchise. Crimes against, in Ohio. 531. 

Franklin, Benjamin. Manufactures raise 
price of land, 352. 

Fraudulent Marking. Penalties for, 399. 

Free List. Changes in tariff of 1890, 417. 

Free Raw Materials, 250-262. 

Free Soil and Free Men. Inspiring senti- J 
ment of the Republican party, 225. 

Free Trade. Efi'ects of, 2 ; practicable with 
convict labor, 20 ; would reduce our labor ■^ 
to foreign standard, 74, 257; England's 
protection and profit, 91 ; voice of interest - 
and selfishness, 93 ; unknown where labor -> 
is dignified, 105 ; not a National necessity, 
159 ; inspired by foreign rivals, 259 ; gives 
our money to foreigners, 295 ; masses 
poorer under, 304; touches to injure, 333 ; 
changes homes to hovels, 429 ; demoral- 
izes citizenship, 429 ; makes millions des- 
titute, 494; number who favor, 496 ; sti- 
fles home manufactures, 509 ; tears down, 
580; kindles tires in foreign furnaces, 
595. 

Free Wool. (See Wool Question.) 

Garfield, James A. Memorial Address on, 
124-130. 

Garfield, James A. Report of, 72; views 
of Wood Tarift' bill, 123; vacations of, 
247 ; on American artisans, 559 ; on Elec- 
toral Commission, 648. 

Garland, Austin M., 108. 

Gear, John IL, 405, 412. 

George, Henry. Land-tax scheme of, 590. 

George, M. C.', 451. 

Georgia. Suppression of Republican suf- 
frage in, 57. 

Germany. Public debt per capita, 428. 

Gerrymandering. (See Congressional 
Gerrymandering.) 

Gerolt, Baron. Constant in friendship, 
518. 

Giddings, Joshua R., 369. 

Gladstone, William E. On remedial legisla- 
tion for Ireland, 535 ; on American Con- 
stitution, 587 ; on American Republic, 
588 ; on English agriculturists, 003. 

Glass. Prices of, 321 ; increase of duties on, 
404. 

Gould, Jay. Letter to A. S. Hewitt, 75. 

Government. Annual expenditures, 252 ; 
blankets for the army, 323, 325 ; pays same 
duties as its citizens, 399 ; only debt it can 
not pay, 519; chief money creditors of, 
544 ; relation to religion, 586. 

Government Bonds. The purchase of, 263- 
270. 

Government Bonds. Sale in I860, 88. 

Grand Army of tlie Republic. First com- 
mander of, 276 ; its circle narrowing, 367. 

Grant, Ulysses S. Memorial Address on, 
431-444. 



INDEX. 



G59 



Grant, Ulysses S. Mentioned for President, 
61 ; eulogized by Logan, 275 ; letter on 
duty of patriots, 43-4 ; on honest elections, 
457 ; farewell address, 521 ; on military 
services of Hayes, 647. 

Great Britain. Commerce of, 304; public 
debt per capita, 428. 

Greeley, Horace. Democratic Presidential 
candidate, 184; protection benefits farm- 
ers, 510 ; prophetic words of, 513. 

Groesbeck, William S., 567. 

Hagan, Philip, 313. 

Halstead, Murat, 641. 

Hamilton, Alexander, 369, 432. 

Hamlin, Hannibal, 273. 

Hammond, Charles, 567. 

Hammond, Nathaniel J., 63. 

Hancock, W infield S., 359. 

Harold. Anecdote of, 517. 

Harris, Isham G., 51)0. 

Harrison, Benjamin. Keciprocity treaty 
with Brazil, 511 ; notified of renomina- 
tion, 581. 

Harrison, William Henry, 567. 

Harrison, Richard A. On (Jhio bar, 567. 

Harter, Michael D. Opposed to free silver, 
541. 

Hartranft, John P., 647. 

Haskell, Dudley C, 123. 

Hawley, Joseph E., 261. 

Hayes, John L. On prices of woolens, 100 ; 
member of Tariif Commission, 108. 

Hayes, Eutherford B. Memorial Address 
on, 640-654. 

Hayes, Eutherford B. Message of 1878, 50 ; 
Administration indorsed, 60 ; daily jour- 
nal, 643, 645. 

Hayes, Titus, 222. 

Hemphill, John J., 456. 

Henderson, David B., 414. 

Hendricks, Thomas A. Alarm about " the 
surplus," 207. 

Herbert, Hilary A., 315, 500. 

Hewitt, Abram S. On iron and steel pro- 
duction, 17 ; supervisors of election, 41 ; 
letter to Jay Gould, 74 ; benefits of pro- 
tection, 93 ; uncertainty of business, 97 ; 
supports Morrison bill, 133, 142,156; on 
wages, 157; colloquy with Eandall, 231, 
450, 451. 

Heyl, Lewis. Extract from Digest, 113. 

Hill, David B. Speech in Brooklyn, 618; 
his position repudiated by his party, 
620. 

Hiseock, Frank, 266, 596. 

Hitt, Robert E., 408. 

Hoadley, George, 173, 532, 567. 

Hoar, Georffc P., 261, 564, 648. 

Holland, 304. 

Holmes, Uriah, 222. 

Homes, American. Our strength and secu- 
rity, 560. 

Home Market. Made by domestic manu- 
facturers, 151 ; best and safest, 309. 

Hooker, Thomas H., 359. 

Hopkins, Albert J., 298. 

Horses. Imported from Canada, 407. 

Hunton, Eppa, 648. 



Hurd, Frank H. On election supervisors, 
38; powers of Executive, 48; in contest 
against Judge Taylor, 65 ; joint resolution 
on tarift', 132 ; duties on wool, 151. 

Husband, Herman, 223. 

Huxley, Thomas H. On ill-paid labor, 491. 

Idalio. Admission of, 466. 

Illicit Distilling. Provisions of Mills bill, 

298. 
Immigration. Republicans oppose indis- V 

criminate, 237. 
Importations. Stimulated by lower duties, 

285 ; diminish home productions, 310 ; 

displace American labor, 374 ; diminished V 

by increased duties, 402; volume under 

tarift of 1890, 622. 
India. Wheat product of, 406. 
Industrial development. New era in the »/ 

South, 348. , 

Industrial independence. Harmony of in- "^ 

terests essential to, 249. 
Inland Marine. Business of, in 1889, 425. 
Internal Eevenue System. Its abolition 

considered, 235 ; taxation reduced, 39S ; in 

tariif of 1890, 480. 
Inventiveness. A National trait, 558. 
Irish Potatoes. Great food product, 244; 

imports from Canada, 407. 
Iron. Product of, in 1887, 425. 
Ironton, Ohio. Campaign speech at, 165. / 

Issues make Parties, 574-580. — -—- - "* 

Issues of 1892, 609-629. 

Italy. "Wheat product of, 406 ; puhlic debt 

per capita, 428. 

Jackson, Andrew. Letter to Dr. Coleman, 
13; message of 1829 on pensions, 214; 
manufactures essential to independence, •* 
249 ; on diversity of labor, 352 ; on consti- -J 
tutionality of protection, message of 1830, 
592. 

Jefferson, Thomas, 193, 235, 247, 248; letter 
to Jean Baptiste Saj', 490 : letter to Ben- 
jamin Austni, 490 ; on income tax, 590. 

Jochams, Andris. Letter of, 326. 

Jones, George, 560. 

Jones, John P., 271. 

Jones. Thomas, 314. 

Jones. Thomas C., 653. 

July Fourth at Woodstock, 533-538. 

July Fourth at Lakeside, 583-588. 

Kasson, John A., 111. 

Keep, John. Prophecy on abolition of 
slavery, 572. 

Kelley, William D. ilemorial Address on, 
447-449. 

Kelley, William D. Eeport of, 72; condi- 
tion of country under free trade, 86. 

Kennan, George, 567. 

Kenner, Duncan F., 108. 

Kerr, Daniel, 415. 

King, J. Floyd, 111. 

King, Eufus, 345. 

Kintrslev, Charles. Hypocritical cant of free 
trader, 489. 

Kirkpatrick & Co., 416. 

Kohlsaat, H. H., 437. 



660 



INDEX. 



Labor, American. First to suffer from low 
tariffs, 17 ; supplanted by importations, 
310; most interested in protection, 351; 
demand for increased, by tariff of 1890 ; 
maintains its own, 597. 
j Labor Arbitration, 196, 199. 
^ Labor Arbitration. No compulsion con- 
templated, 196 ; amicable adjustment pro- 
moted, 197 ; scope of proposed law, 197 ; 
expense borne by National Treasury, 198 ; 
.^ best way of settlini; differences between 
V labor and cajjital, 199. 

Laborers. Petition for increase of duties, 3. 

Lafayette, Marquis de. On Ohio pioneers, 
565. 

Lands. Prices in Pennsylvania and Vir- 
ginia, 191; in Kentucky and Ohio, 192; 
forfeitures of unearned public, 466. 

Lawrence, Mass. Prosperity under pro- 
tection, 79. 

Lee, Eichard Henry, 345. 

Lee, Robert E., 192" 

Lee, W. H. F., 297. 

Lincoln, Abraham. His confidence in the 
people, 241 ; tribute to soldiers, 366 ; opin- 
ion of Grant's generalship, 438 ; promise 
of, 466 ; aversion to cheap men, 491 ; on 
saving the Union, 535; speeches in Ohio, 
569 ; reliance upon Divine power, 585 ; 
inaugurals of 1861 and 1865, 585, 586 ; not 
concerned about Gettysburg, 607. 

Liquor Traffic. Taxation of, 226. 

Live Stock. Exports of, 245. 

Logan, John A. Memorial Address on, 
271-276. 

Long, John D., 206. 

Louisiana. Election in, 65 ; white and col- 
ored population, 169. 

Low, Abiel A., 108. 

Lowell, Mass. Prosperity under protection, 
79. 

Lumber. Imports from Canada, 407. 

Macbeth, George A. Examination of, 404. 

Madison, James, 214, 236, 247, 345, 369, 432. 

Maddock, John. On English pottery in- 
terests, 116. 

MacGahan, J. A., 567. 

Mahan, Asa, 573. 

Mahone, William, 181, 188, 193. 

Maine. Attempt at usurpation in, 56. 

Manchester, Eng. Contrasted with Ameri- 
\ can cities, 79. 

Manning, Cardinal. On hours of labor, 
470 ; on free trade, 494 ; on cultivation of 
land in England, 604. 

Manning, Daniel. Letter of resignation, 
209 ; objections to ad valorem duties, 301. 

Manufactures. American exhibit at Cen- 
tennial, 15 ; discrimination against, by 
Wood Bill, 21 ; " golden era " of, 82 ; pro- 
hibited by England in colonies, 93 ; de- 
-- struction fatal to American labor, 98. 

Markets of the World. " A free-trade shad- 
ow-dance," 281, 35^. 

Marshall, Chief Justice, 246, 432. 

Martin, William, 316. 

Martin and Tingle. Eeport on ad valorem 
duties, 300. 



Massachusetts. Benefits from protection, 
250. 

Mason, James M. On riders to appropria- 
tions, 47. 

Matthews, Stanley, 567. 

McClellan, George B., 359. 

McComas, Louis E., 469. 

McCray, George W. On certificates of elec- 
tion, 63. 

McCullough, Hueh, 108, 451. 

McLane, Robert M. Quorum, how secured, 
389, 392. 

McLean, John, 567. 

McMahon, John A. On deputy marshals, 
41 ; on riders to appropriations, 44. 

McNulty, Caleb, 572. 

McPhersou, James B., 522. 

Meade, George G„ 359. 

Meat Inspection, 465. 

Mendenhall, Thomas C, 567. 

Merchant Marine. How to encourage, 424. 

Metal Schedule. Act of 1890, 409, 410, 472. 

Mexico. Trade with, in 1887, 350. 

Miller, Samuel F., 648. 

Mills, Roger Q. On results of protection, 
332 ; on importations, 332, 453. 

Mills Tariff Bill, 290-335. 

Mills Tariff Bill. Fashioned outside of 
Committee, 277 ; points of agreement, 290 ; 
increased revenues, 293, 295 : duties on 
raw materials increased, finished products 
diminished, 296 ; not an American meas- 
ure, 303; effects of passage, 312. 

Mining. Increase in United States, 95. 

Minnesota. Election in, 56. 

Mississippi. Suppression of suffrage in, 58 ; 
white and colored population, 169. 

Money. Worst form passes current, 526. 

Monroe, James, 214, 236, 248. 

Monroe, James, Prof, 573. 

Montana. Admission of, 466. 

Moore, J. S., 446. 

Morey, Henry L., 470. 

Morgan, John, 573. 

Morrill, Justin S., 273. 

Morrill Tariff Bill. Basis of Momson bill, 
134 ; foundation of our greatest prosperity, 
427 ; beginning of new era, 655, 556. 

Morris, Gouverneur. Views on constitu- 
tional quorum, 388. 

Morris, Theodore W., 153. 

Morris, Thomas, 568. 

Morrison, William E., 143, 148, 152, 157, 184, 
206, 209, 450. 

Morrison Tariff Bill, 131-159. 

Morrison Tariff Bill. Ambiguous and un- 
certain, 134; mode of laying duties con- 
fusing, 135 ; too uncertain for public law, 
136 ; "complexities illustrated, 137 ; iron, 
steel, woolen, and cotton schedules, 138; 
horizontal reduction invention of indo- 
lence, 140 ; its fitting corollary, 140 ; would 
increase importations, 142 ; on wages, 156 ; 
date introduced, 234. 

Morrow, Jeremiah, 568. 

Morse, Leopold, 319. 

Morse, Samuel F. B., 218, 222. 

Mortgages. Often Evidences of Prosperity, 
546'. 



INDEX. 



661 



Morton, Levi P., 513. 
Morton, Oliver P., 273, 648. 
Mugwumps. All free traders, 251. 
Mulhall, Michael G. On growth of manu- 
factures, 94, 347. 
Mundella, A. J. Letter to, 493. 

Nash, George K. Opinion of, 69. 

Naval Officer Burt. Keport on ad valorem 

duties, 300. 
Navigation Act. Supplement to, 93. 
Nebraska Chautauqua Association. Invita- 
tion of, 589. 
Nelson, Knute, 297. 
New England. Markets of, 307 ; value to 

farmers, 308 ; contrast with Old England, 

309' needs protection, 251. 
New England and the Future, 482-486. 
New Hampshire. Election case, 65. 
New York Central Eailroad. Tonnage of, 

426. 
NiedrLnghaus, F. G. Letter of, 416. 
Niles, Oliio. Campaign speech at, 539. 
No Compromise with the Demagogue, 523- 

532. 
North Dakota. Admission of, 466. 
Not a Candidate, 366. 
Notification Address to Mr. Harrison, 581, 

582. 
Noyes, Edward F., 513, 647. 
Nullification. Ordinance of, 591. 

Oates, William C, 386, 499. 

Oberlin College, 571-573. 

Offensive Partisanship, 630-632. 

O'Hara, Theodore. Quotation from, 522. 

Ohio Building. Dedication of the, 630-632. 

Ohio. Congressional apportionment of, 24 ; 
vote and pluralities, 25 ; Republican plat- 
form of 1878, 29 ; growth of Mahoning iron 
industries, 96 ; Eepublican platform of 
1885, 105 ; farm statistics, 248 ; good Gov- 
ernors of, 378; appropriations for, 532* 
rank by population, 564; character of 
early settlers, 565 ; growth of, since 1876, 
632. 

Ohio Campaign of 1891, 539-563. 

Ohio. The State of, 564r-570. 

Ohio Victory of 1891, The, 562, 563. 

(Jliver, Henry W., Jr., 108. 

Ordinance of 1787, 565. 

Original Package Law, 465. 

Orrville, Ohio. Campaign speech at, 459. 

Owens, James W., 450. 

Panics. Always preceded by enormous im- 
portations, 346. 

Parties. Have always existed, 368 ; neces- 
sary to popular government, 574. 

Patent Onice. Commissioner of. Patents 
granted in 1887,305 ; annual average past 
decade, 558. 

Paterson, N. J., 231. 

Payne, Henry B., 378, 648. 

Pearl River. Concession as to harbor, 503. 

Peck, Charles F. Keport as Labor Commis- 
sioner, 624. 

Peelle, William A., Jr. Report as Labor 
Commissioner, 624. 



Pendleton, George N. Views on green- 
backs, 27. 

Pennsylvania Eailroad. Tonnage of, 426. 

Pensions. The Payment of, 200-202. 

Pension Arrears. Law of 1878, 177. 

Pension Disability Bill, 466. 

Pensions and the Public Debt, 515-522. 

Perry, Aaron F., 567. 

Petersburg, Virginia. Campaign speech at, 
181. 

Peterson's Counterfeit and Bank-Note De- 
tector. On condition of State bank money, 
611; not needed under Republican rule, 
614. 

Phelps, John S., 108. 

Philadelphia. Campaign speech at, 609 ; 
birth of Republican party, 576 ; energy 
and spirit of, 609. 

Phillips, James, Jr. On the world's mar- 
kets, 281. 

Phister, Elijah C, 390. 

Phosphorus. Manufacture of, 626. 

Pig Iron. Southern production of, 348; 
duties under act of 1890, 409. 

Pinckney, Charles J., 513. 

Plate Glass Trust. Circular of, 327 ; investi- 
gation of, 328. 

Pope, John, 522. 

Population. White and colored in South, 
169. 

Porter, David D., 359. 

Porter, Robert P. On Distress in Black 
District, 119. 

Pottery Association, United States. Report 
of, 11. 

Pottery, American interests threatened, 5; 
English and American contrasted, 7 ; ar- 
tistic, 11 ; arbitration in Staffordshire, 115; 
growth of industry from 1860, 403 ; de- 
crease in price, 404 ; duties on, 471. 

Powell, Edwin. Views of, 9. 

Powell, George Baden. On colonial trade, 
92. 

Power, James D. Eeport on ad valorem 
duties, 300. 

Price, John, 573. 

Prices, American. Under protection and 
free trade, 99 ; not foreign cost duty add- -^ 
ed, 324; necessaries and comforts in 1892, 
596 ; lower than ever before, 506. 

Producers. Manufacturei-s' interests iden- ^ 
tical with, 255. 

Prospect and Retrospect, 220-224. 

Protection. Develops mineral resources, 5 ; -^ 
insures home competition, (i ; established 
by First Congress, 14 ; true National poll- ^ 
cy, 19, 70; niaintains National credit, 22; 
voice of labor, 93 ; reduces prices, 99 ; es- 
sential to prosperity, 159 ; for all or none, 
251 ; opposed by Anglomaniacs, 261 ; de- 
fined, 293 ; secures free trade between the 
States, 294; keeps our money at home, 
295 ; general effects of, 301 ; encourages 
inventions, 301 ; not responsible for trusts. 
327 ; noncompeting products free, 341 ; 
not paid by consumers, 343 ; insures pros- 
perity, 427 ; widens sphere of endeavor, 
428; widest encouragement, largest re- 
wards, 430 ; nations and people favoring, 



662 



INDEX. 



496 ; taxes luxuries, 509 ; silences false 
prophecy, 512; builds up, 580: doctrine 
of patriotism, 594 ; not burden, but bless- 
ing, 604 ; our rank under, 605 ; petitions 
for, in 1789, 616 ; surer and safer in raising 
revenue, 618. 

Protection and Eevenue, 368-380. 

Protection and the South, 337-354. 

Protection. The Triumph of, 589-605. 

Protective System. Doctrine of self-pres- 
ervation, 345. 

Protective Tariff. (See Protection.) 

Public Credit. Condition in 1860, 87, 88 ; 
contrast in 1889, 375. 

Public Debt. Eeduced under protection, 
95, 375 ; amount at close of war, 180 ; de- 
crease per year and day, 427 ; amount per 
capita, 428 ; rapid extinguishment of, 467 ; 
interest on, and pensions, contrasted, 520. 

Pugh, George E., 568. 

Quorum. The Question of a, 381-394. 

Kailroads. Mileage and tonnage of, 425. 

Piandall, Samuel J., 201, 209, 231. 

Kandolph, John. Anecdote of, 191, 

Kanney, Rufus P., 567. 

Raum, Green B., 192. 

Kawlins, John A., 431. 

Reciprocity. "Aldrich Amendment," the, 

479 ; treaties with Brazil, Cuba, Germany, 

Italy, etc., 623. 
Redemption Fund. Amount of, 208. 
Recce's Chart of Prices, 99. 
Reed, Thomas B., 206, 211, 355. 
Reid, Whitelaw. Editor of Tribune, 513; 

minister to France, 513; candidate for 

Vice-President, 629; military services of 

Hayes, 646. 
Religion. An Auxiliary to, 606-608. 
Reno, Jesse L., 522. 
Representation. States and districts robbed 

of, 228. 
\i Republic. Three events in history of, 533, 

534 ; Gladstone's prophecy, 588. 
Republican Conventions of Ohio. In 1878, 

29 ; in 1885, 105 ; in 1887, 238. 
\^, Republican Party. Its glory tills the world, 

241 ; record unrivaled, 524 ; but three 

National defeats, 633 ; contrasted with 

Democratic party, 634. 
Resolutions of 1798, 193. 
Revenues. Reduction of, contrast between 

parties, 286-289. 
Revenue Tariff. (See Tariff for Revenue 

\ ONLY.) 

Revolutionary Fathers. Character of, 583- 

586. 
Revolutionary War. Purposes of, 363. 
Rice, Americus V. Report by, 53. 
Rice Association of Georgia. On wages, 78 ; 

growth of industry under protection, 100. 
Riders to Appropriations. Discussion of, 

44-48 ; iniportant legislation by, 267 
River and Harbor bill, 234. 
Roach, John, 16. 
Rosecrans, William S., 643. 
Ross, John H., 315. 
Rowan, Stephen C, 360. 



Russell, John E., 298. 
Russell, William A. Statistics by, 78. 
Russia, 304, 406; public debt, per capita, 
428. 

St. Louis Stamping Co. Letter from, 417. 

Savings Banks. Deposits in, 428, 479. 

Saylef, Milton, 15. 

Scammon, E. P., 644. 

Schenck, Robert C, 273. 

Sciiotield, John M., 439. 

Schools, Our Public, 215-219. 

Schools, Public. Free to all, 215; include 
higher studies, 216; afford equal oppor- 
tunities, 217 ; importance of exact knowl- 
edge, 218; have a purpose, 219. 

Scott, William L., 296, 383. 

Scott, Winfield S., 641. 

Searles, John E., Jr. Letter from, 453. 

Secretary of the Treasury. Report of 1878, 
12; of 1881,94; of 1883, 265; of 1887,265; 
of 1847, 292; of 1890, 500. 

Sedgwick, John, 522. 

Senate Tariff Bill, 355-357. 

Senate, United States. The First, 585 ; re- 
ply to Washington, 585. 

Sessions, George, 210. 

Seward, William H. On riders to appro- 
priations, 46; 432; message to Prussia, 
518. 

Sewing Machines. Price of, 315. 

Shaw, J. C. Testimony of, 7. 

Sheep. Imports from Canada, 407. 

Shellabarger, Samuel, 568. 

Sheridan, Philip II., 359. 

Sherman, John. Indorsed for President, 
60; for Senator, 165; re-elected Senator, 
181 ; at Boston, 250; on validity of law of 
1881, 266. 

Sherman, Roger, 345. 

Sherman, William T., 359, 379. 

Shipherd. John J., 573. 

Sickles, Daniel E. At Gettysburg, 607. 

Silver Bill, The, 454, 455. 

Silver. Free and unlimited coinage of, 539, 
543. 

Smith, Goldwin. On agricultural schedule 
of tariff of 1890,407. 

Smith, William J., 316, 404. 

Soldier. The American volunteer, 358-367. 

Sorghum, 244. 

South America. Trade with, 350. 

South Carolina. White and colored popu- 
lation, 169. 

South Dakota. Admission of, 466. 

Southard, Milton I., 33, 

South, The. Inaugurated protective system, 
346 ; offers bounties to manufactories, 529. 

Sowden, W. H., 296. 

Spain. Public debt, per capita, 428. 

Specific Duties. Always uniform, 299. 

Spencer, Herbert, 559. 

Springer, William M., 122, 384,401. 

Stanton, Edwm M., 431, 432, 567 ; his single 
purpose, 569 ; at Lincoln's deathbed, 570. / 

State Banks. Notes of, 610; number of 
worthless, 613. 

Statutes of United States. (See Acts of 
Congress.) 



INDEX. 



663 



steel Billets. Duty on, 296, 475. 

Steel Rails. Product in 1887, 425 ; duty on, 
474. 

Steel Shipping. Tonnage of, 425. 

Stephens, Alexander H.' Views on Potter 
Committee, 31. 

Steven.s, Thaddeus, 273. 

Storer, Bellamy, 5f)7. 
- Strikes. Protection not responsible for, 376. 

Strong, William, 648. 

Struble, Isaac H., 320. 

Structural Iron and Steel, 473. 

Sugar. Duty on, 452, 453. 

Sullivan, Sir' Edward. On labor under pro- 
~4 tection and free trade, 77 ; blasting etiects 
of free trade, 304. 

Sumac. Duty on, 187. 

Sumner, Charles. Eulogized by Logan, 274. 

Surplus in the Treasury, 203-211 ; compel- 
ling President to buy bonds, 203 ; pur- 
chases by parties contrasted, 204 ; Demo- 
cratic majority responsible for, 232. 

Swan, Joseph E., 567. 

Swank, James M. Statistics on iron and 
steel, 79. 

Swayne, Noah, 567. 

Systems, not schedules, on trial, 333. 



Tappan, Benjamin, 568. 

Tariff. Keductions by, 108; definition of, 
185; protective, not paid by consumer, 
343 ; public scrutiny into, 397 ; those who 
oppose, 259, 260; revenue aiid protective 
periods contrasted, 346, 347 ; items of act 
of 1890, 471 ; amended by Senate, 471 ; of 
Washington, Jefferson, Hamilton, Madi- 
son, 547, 548; constitutionality of, 613. 

Tariff of 1883, 106-123. 

Tariff' of 1890, 397-430. 

Tariff Commission. Members of, 108. 

Tariff' Revision. Demand for, 106 ; to cor- 
rect, not destroy, 334 ; not in constitutional 
manner, 635. 

Tariff' for Revenue Only. By whom de- 
manded, 96; condemned by our experi- 
ence, 105; encourages frauds and under- 
valuations, 278 ; proper subjects for taxa- 
tion under, 293; revenue tariff" defined, 
338 ; always paid by consumer, 372 ; prices 
under, fixed by foreigners, 373 ; English 
declaration, 496; sugar dutiable under, 
553. 

Tariff Reform. Delusive theories of, 353, 
577, 578. 

Taxation. Reduced Under protection, 95, 
374 ; old as Government, 337 ; Americans 
least taxed people, 377. 

Taylor, Ezra B. Contest against, 62-69. 

Taylor, Thomas. Tribute to Lincoln, 651. 

Taylor, Zacbary, 641. 

Tea. Importation of, in 1877, 343. 

Telegraph. First messacre in 1844, 218. 

" Ten-dollar Suit." Incident of, 320, 321. 

Thomas, George II., 359. 

Thompson, Jacob, 178. 

Thompson, John B. Report by, 67. 

Thurman, Allen G. Views on greenbacks, 
28; on riders to appropriations, 44, 647, 
648. 



^ 



Titfin, Edward, 560, 566. 

Tilden, Samuel J. Debate with Greeley, 
513 ; abilities as organizer, 648. 

Tin Plate. Report of U. S. Iron and Tin- 
plate Co., 89; free under Mills bill, 283; 
and sheet iron taxed, 298 ; world's supply, 
283 ; importation of, 285 ; duties, act of 
1890, 411 ; President may admit free, 554; 
product of, in 1892, 625. 

Tobacco. Tax on, 233, 298. 

Tod, David, 222, 566. 

Tonnage. Our domestic and foreign, 424. 

Tools, American. Best in tlie world, 559. 

Townsend, Amos, 15. 

" Trammels of Trade." Discussion of, 312. 

Treaty. The Hawaiian, 502-506. 

Tribune's Jubilee, The, 507-514. 

Trumbull, Jonathan, 345. 

Trusts. Of foreign origin, 327 ; encouraged 
by Mills bill, 329. 

Tucker, J. Randolph. Resolution of, 52; 
remarks by, 118, 141, 184 • revenue duty 
defined, 339 ; constitutional quorum, 390 ; 
on direct tax, 499. 

Tupper, Sir Charles. Opposed to free trade, 

Turner, Henry G., 162. 
Turner, Oscar, 73. 

Undervaluations. Encouraged by ad va- 
lorem duties, 278. 

Underwood, John W. H., 108. 

United States. Progress under protection 
unparalleled, 94; growth of population, 
145; development from 1860 to 1880, 146; 
sum of industries, 347 ; water carriage, 
424; manufactures of, in 1889,425; pub- 
lic debt per capita, 428; its two great 
debts, 519 ; debts, National, State, county, 
decrease of, 546. 

Updegraff, Jonathan, 86, 90. 

Van Buren, Martin, 247. 

Veto Power. Discussed by The Eedcralist, 

4S ; commended by Democratic National 

Conventions, 49. 
Views of the Minority, 277-289. 
Virginia. What protection means to, 181- 

195. 
Voluntary Arbitration. Recognized in law, 

196. 
Vote. Of Northern and Southern States, 

167. 

Wade, Beniamin F., 261, 369. 

Wadlin, Horace G. Report as Labor Com- 
missioner, 624. V 

Wasjcs. Increased by protection, 15; in 
Scotland and United States, 18 ; reduction 
object of revenue reform, 121 ; threatened 
by Morrison bill, 157; at Cologne, 316; 
in Saxony, 317; of rice growers in the 
South, 3l'7 ; in China, Japan, India, 318 ; 
in United States in 1892 higher th.in ever 
before, 597; of English agricultural la- 
borers, 604; increase of, 624. 

Waite, Morrison R., 567. 

Walker, Robert J. Autlior of tarif! of 1846, 
230 ; definition of revenue tariff, 292. 



6Q^ 



INDEX. 



"Wallace-McKinley contest, 160-164. 

Warner, A. J., 214. 

Washburn, William D. Contest against, 56. 

Washburne, Elihu B., 513. 

Washington, George. At Mount Vernon, 246 ; 
on agriculture, 248 ; no disinterested fa- 
vors among nations, 340 ; on public credit, 
525 ; favored protection, 527 ; signed lirst 
protective tarirtlaw, 535, 5!U ; wore home- 
made clothes at inauguration, 636 ; on 
Ohio Valley, 564; on Marietta, 565; in- 
augural address, 585. 

Washington. Admission of, 466. 

" Waving of Bloody Shirt." What it means, 
182. 

Wealth. Increase of, 347. 

Webster, Daniel, 246 ; 369 ; views of tariff in 
1820 and 1846, 420, 421; on disordered 
currency, 527 ; description of celebration 
at Philadelphia in 1788, 628. 

Weihe, William, 316. 

Wellborn, Oliver, 133. 

Wells, David A. Letter from, 493. 

West Indies. Trade with, 350. 

Wheat. Ohio product of, 246 ; competition 
with world's product, 406. 

White, A. C., 155. 

Quotations from, 195, 



On growth of American 



Whittier, John G. 

222, 483, 486, 651. 
Whitthorne, W. C. 

trade, 94. 
Williams, D. T.,155. 
Williams, Jere N., 45. 
Williams, Thomas, 154, 314. 
Williams, William. Noble sentiment of, 516. 
Wilmot Proviso, 575. 
Wilson, Benjamin, 64. 



Wilson, Henry, 261. 

Wilson, William L. On Democratic Na- 
tional Platform of 1892, 619, 620. 

Winchell, George D. Letter from, 417. 

Windom, William, 467, 500. 

Window Glass. Importation of, 285. 

Wire Fencing. Duty on, 296. 

Wire Nails. Duty o'n, 296, 579. 

Wise, George D., 185. 

Wise, John S., 182, 193. 

Wood. Fernando, 30, 184, 223. 

Wood Tarift Bill, 1-22 ; general features of, 
1 ; its injurious efl'ects, 4 ; such legislation 
not wanted, 22. 

Wool. Clip of 1880, 245; importation in 
1877, 279; product in 1887, 279; duty on, 
by Act of 1883, 285; duties increased by 
tariff of 1890, 409 ; low price of, 548 ; manu- 
factures of, 625 ; schedule of Act of 1890, 
476. 

Wool Question. Discussion of, 175 ; free 
wool, free woolens, 254 ; free wool by Mills 
bill, 279-282, 578. 

Workingmen. Testimony of, 313-316; reso- 
lutions of English, favoring protection, , 
330 ; American, truly independent, 568. ^ 

World's Fair at Chicago, 559. 

Worsteds. Manufacture revived, 468. 

Worthington, Thomas, 568. 

Wright, G. Frederick, 573. 

Writing Paper. Importation of, 285. 

Wyoming. Admission of, 466. 



Years of Depression, 508. 

Years of Plenty, 508. 

Young, Edward. Estimate of, 1. 

Youngstown, Ohio. Growth of, 222. 



J 



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